From: “D Gartner”
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 22:09:58 -0500
On Tuesday, April 27th, I stopped by the Ralph Nader/James Love
“Appraising Microsoft” site, just to see what was up with their
upcoming conference on April 30th. I found the pages outlining
their agenda plus speakers.
At http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/ams2-panels.html,
you’ll find their Agenda, where the last panel supposedly
covers…
—
Panel Four 3:15 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.
Non antitrust remedies
Government and private procurement policies
Consumer Boycotts
Linux, xBSD and other free software
Alternative commercial operating systems, such as
BeOS, Mac-X OS, Amiga, New Deal
—
Notice that NewDeal Office, which isn’t an operating system, is
listed there, while OS/2, DOS, Netware, QNX, etc. are missing.
Secondly, the workshops don’t actually discuss the other OSs in an
detail; so even if those platforms are listed, they still have no
representatives at the conference.
The same applies to Linux. If you check their list of speakers
[URL below], you’ll see that while the list includes CEOs from
Caldera and RedHat, it has no corporate official from other
software vendors, nor any independent Linux programmers, resellers,
or user groups who could offer their own insights to the
public.
This conference is much like their first one in Nov 1997. After
so many of us had protested the first conference’s mistakes and had
asked for corrections to the A.M. site– e.g. their handling of
operating systems and user groups– it’s hard to just sit back and
attribute this 2nd conference as some sort of “mistake” or
“oversight” based merely on ignorance.
James Love isn’t merely forgetting about the software and groups
we care about. He simply doesn’t _respect_ us and doesn’t want to
include us in his conference.
As he told me in a telephone conversation, “[not verbatim] “What
have these user groups and programmers done? What remedies have
these people ever proposed that would convince us they deserve to
be included? We need people who have ideas, who know what they’re
talking about, who can speak….”
It’s time to send him your answers to his questions.
—
Steps you can take
1. Go to the A.M. website, and check out the Speakers [<
AHREF=”http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/speakers2.html”>http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/speakers2.html]
and Agenda [http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/ams2-panels.html
pages.
2. E-mail a respectful complaint to James Love and Ralph Nader.
Politely let them know that their conference should be open and
inclusive to all OSs, user groups, developers, resellers etc..
NOTE! If you yourself belong to a group that should be included,
then give Love all the contact info he needs to reach you, so that
you may be invited to his next conference. Insist on it. 🙂
3. If you can telephone them, consider calling the A.M. contact
person, Donna Colvin, at 202-387-8030, where James Love also can be
reached.
Diane Gartner
IACT Co-ordinator
__________________________________________________
International Alliance for Compatible Technology
http://pages.cthome.net/iact/
__________________________________________________
more open standards, user choice and
free access to compatible technology