Calm, Rational Penguinistas are Called For!

[elfs]

Okay, this is for the Puget Sound Penguinistas. I need a Linux guru who can talk business, stat. John Moe, the host of KUOW's tech show The Works, recently did a show on "alternatives to Microsoft"; the show was entirely about Apple and why it's so great.

I asked him why didn't include Linux in the list of alternatives, since arguably it powers more servers and nearly as many desktops. (Nevermind that the core of Mac OS X is BSD... we won't discuss that.) He said he'd like to do one, but he needed someone who could talk Linux business rationally. He said his opening show was about "the two BIG companies"-- what, like the aggregate Linux market doesn't show up well compared to iTunes?

Anyway, anyone out there want to put forth a proposal for what we could discuss with John Moe?

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

This may be something of a gimmick, but my 12 year old son can talk the legs off a woodstove about Linux. He's young enough to SOUND like the voice of the future.

Want to try talking to him? He's 12, but he sure ain't stupid, and he has passionate ideas about Linux, open source, free software (not, he tells me, like free beer; more like free speech).

He spent the past week getting Gentoo to work on the partition that used to have an LFS system installed. He's gotten his dad & me to read In the Beginning Was the Command Line and Torvalds' biography.

Let me know via LJ or by email dena at shunra dot net.

Re:

[elfs.livejournal.com]

It's a neat idea, but I think it is too much of a gimmick for a first go. It would be cool for a future show, if we could swing it. We just need good press right now. I want someone who can make the point that all OS's need support, but with the right support, the ROI on Linux is shorter than it is with Windows, users need not fear vendor lock-in and the really scary Software Business Alliance is held at bay like a vampire facing the dawn. An experienced business leader is more useful than the most technically-savvy person, even a cool twelve-year-old.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Yes, the sounds reasonable - and he's definitely more a techie than a sales/marketing guy.

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[jenkitty.livejournal.com]

*snickers* It'll sound just like the ads...

"He's just a kid."

"His name... is Linux."

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[elfs.livejournal.com]

And when he sees a really ugly car, he says something that leads to his mouth being washed out with soap!

[shunra.livejournal.com]

No...
...I honestly don't think he knows any "dirty" language (not to mention, that's not how his dads & I see parenting, but that's a completely different issue).

He's an Aspie. All tech, no social skills. But cartech has never been interesting to him. Boats & sailing - yes. Skiing and diving - yes. Cars and rock music? no.

As I've said elsewhere, he's very strange. I love him to pieces, and I often just don't understand him.

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[elfs.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was referring to the fact that Chevrolet ran an ad during the superbowl right after the Linux ad. The Chevy ad showed a whole bunch of kids with soap in their mouths; apparently, the gimmick is that they were so surprised when they saw the new Chevy they couldn't restrain themselves from shouting "Holy Shit!"

Anyway, one of the kids in the ad was the exact same kid they use to represent "Linux". It blew my suspension of disbelief.

And I thought most of the kids were saying "Holy shit!" because they were dismayed at the idea of having to get driven to school in such an ugly hunk of junk.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Oh...

::slinks back into hippieland, where the TV is the screen no-one watches, and ugly hunks of junk are an apt description of the yard, next door::

[shunra.livejournal.com]

I haven't actually seen the ads, however...

...that's him, in a nutshell. He latched onto the idea of Linux like a pit bull, when he was 9, and has been at it ever since. Other kids, you buy them stuff for Christmas. Him, I let him install RedHat 9 on my computer. He hardly touched any of the stuff... ...the "family" computer runs several different distributions of Linux, each configuration optimized for a different type of use.

He is a very strange kid. Delightful. Wonderful. Sweet, trustworthy, serious, interesting. And truly strange.

And he's having the most DIFFICULT time finding people to talk to about his fascination with Linux. We're working on getting together a Port Townsend LUG... ...I want it for self-defense. I just don't know enough to be a good sounding board (let alone teacher!) for my boy.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Sending a good contact email with you Cc:'ed.