why not going to street?

[Matt Cahill]

On October 16, 2004 05:23 pm, Zbigniew Koziol wrote:
> Last weeks I have been forced by circumstances to register my own
> company, in order to be able to work as a subcontructor for another one.
> Not that I did not like the idea. Actually, I had that idea behind me
> for a long time. I was only afraid to go after it.
>
> The company name I registered is "SoftQuake Open Source Business
> Solutions". I treat the name SoftQuake as (tm).
>
> And how now to proceed? I would like to develop the company under that
> name. Would like to intercept a huge portion on market and make Gates on
> the second place of most reach people.
>
> Open Source and Business certainly have a lot of common, potentially.
> How only to convince people?
>
> Why not to make a peacefull, legal demonstration on streets of Toronto?
> Against using Microsoft products? That would probably bring medias and
> peoples attention.
>
> I believe that a large part of participants of this list would like to
> attend.
>
> zb.

  Ironically, I've found that there are few within the activist community in 
Toronto - even those dead-set against the WTO - who recognize the importance 
of open-source software.  I went to an event put on by the Toronto Social 
Forum a couple of years ago, and the master-of-ceremonies was giving a 
presentation at Ryerson.  She was articulating all of these (largely 
anti-corporate, anti-WTO) things on PowerPoint from a laptop running XP.  In 
response to this, I ended up doing a presentation on open-source software at 
the next forum.  There were only four people who showed up to the lecture, 
and one of them was an ex-girlfriend.
  So, I guess what I'm saying is that the traditional "protest community", if 
I may use that term, is still largely ignorant that the very tools they use 
to inform people are laden with monopolistic/anti-competitive software.  
  I fear, if you truly want to stage a demonstration, you may have trouble 
finding support outside of the tech community.


-- 
Matt Cahill
            m dash cahill at rogers dot com
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