[ Doug Loss of SEUL
writes: ]
I’d like to talk about something that many of us have noticed,
and that I think we need to address. It seems to me that
increasingly the many Linux trade shows around North America at
least (and I suspect other parts of the world too) are being run by
groups that just don’t “get” the Linux community.
Representatives from our project, SEUL (Simple End User Linux),
were at a few shows during the first few months of this year. At
all of them we noticed the paucity of representation of anything
other than commercial companies. Where was GNOME? Where was KDE?
What about Debian? They weren’t there.
Friends, I’m afraid this is giving a very distorted view of the
Linux community to interested attendees of these shows. They’re
going to think that Linux is pretty much like Windows and MacOS,
dominated by corporate interests. Aside from technical differences,
what do they see to distinguish us from the computer milieus they
already know?
We need to find ways to increase the participation and
visibility of the non-commercial portion of the Linux community at
these shows. I have a suggestion for a way to do just that. This
idea comes from my friend Pete St. Onge. This will only work if the
organizers of the shows buy into the idea, but I think it will be a
win for everyone if they do. Enough. The idea is: make a condition
of participation in the show for each commercial organization be
the sponsorship of one or more non-commercial Linux projects’s
attendance at the show. The number could be set by the organizers
in any manner they like. This sponsorship should probably include
help with transportation and lodging, as those are often the
biggest impediments for small projects to participate in shows.
As I see it, the commercial groups would be allowed to sponsor
whichever groups they like. I could see IBM sponsoring Apache,
Corel sponsoring Debian or WINE, Red Hat sponsoring GNOME, O’Reilly
sponsoring the LDP, etc. These sponsorships could provide very
useful positioning in the Linux community, as we seem to be most
supportive of those companies that are supportive of us. By the
same token, I suspect the sponsored projects would have good
feelings toward their sponsors and might be interested in
developing the relationship further. The shows would benefit by
having more exhibits and a much greater and more interesting
variety among them.
Pete came up with this idea as a regularization of something
that actually happened to us. We were contacted by a commercial
organization (I won’t name them without their permission) about
sponsoring SEUL to attend LinuxWorldExpo in NYC last March. It was
short notice, so initially we said, sorry, no time. They were very
enthusiastic about having us, though, and offered to cover lodging
and transportation (within reason) of some SEUL representatives.
Members of the Linux Knowledge Base (a SEUL-affiliated project)
decided that they could put together a presentation quickly enough,
and agreed to do so. We were astounded by this generosity, and
certainly are interested in working with this commercial
organization in the future. We think this sort of thing could work
on a larger scale.
This is a way to increase non-commercial project
participation in trade shows; I’m sure it’s not the only
way. Please, let’s discuss this idea and come up with others. It
will help us all to show the world what the Linux community is all
about.