NewsForge: The Futility of Arguing with Paid Advocates

“I once stood in a hotel lobby in Amman, Jordan, listening
quietly as a passionate GNU/Linux advocate tried to get Microsoft
employees to agree that free software would be better for the
Muslim world than proprietary software. His opponents were getting
paid to boost Microsoft and proprietary software and couldn’t
change their beliefs–at least in public–without losing their
jobs, so there was no way the Linux advocate could ‘win’ this
argument. I’ve witnessed similar scenes all over the world, and
cringed at every one. Linux boosters shouldn’t waste their (our)
energy trying to convince unconvicable people. There are better
uses for that passion.

“A month or so ago TheLinuxShow had notorious anti-GPL fudster
Ken Brown of AdTI as a guest. The show regulars and guest Eric S.
Raymond were arguing with him. Sure, the points they made were
valid, and Brown’s rebuttals were poor, but Eric and the others
displayed a major amount of anger toward Brown, even though when
you came right down to Ken was just a working stiff doing his
job…”

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