tlug: Linux at the m$ party

[Jim Schweizer <schweiz@example.com>]

Hi all,

I considered posting this to tlug-advocacy, but I
thought that everyone should be able to enjoy it. Follow-ups,
however, should go to advocacy.

(Reposted with permission of the author - thanks Rick.)


Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 02:03:05 -0800
From: Rick Moen <rick@example.com>
Subject: [svlug] Silicon Valley Tea Party report

The idea for a Silicon Valley Tea party came from SVLUG member
Hans Cathcart on October 30:  He proposed, on the mailing list 
that day, that the Linux community should help Microsoft
celebrate opening its new office in Linux country (Palo Alto) on
Wednesday  the 11th by welcoming them en-masse, but nobody seemed
interested.  

I was, however, so on Halloween I listed "'Linux "Boston Tea
Party' at  Microsoft" as an upcoming Linux event on my BALE page
(linuxmafia.com/bale/), with a reminder to RSVP, a copy of Hans's
post, a street map of the area, and the following remarks (my
very own "Halloween Memo"):

The Linux community should show up and give a friendly
welcome to Microsoft.  Bring Linux literature and CD
distributions to hand out.  Make sure we're noticed -- but
there's no need to be the least confrontational:  Welcome
Microsoft to the world of  level playing fields and
interoperable applications using commodity protocols.  That's
the future it'll have to fit into, after all.

Don't forget to RSVP to "DevCenter@example.com".  You
probably  _don't_ want to use "Boston Tea Party" or such in your
subject header.

There the calendar item sat, on BALE, until the morning of the
9th. I had made some arrangements with SuSE staffers to get
CD-ROMs, but had no idea if more than a few other Linuxers would
be joining me.

So, I was slightly surprised when I received an e-mail from
reporter Amy Harmon of the New York Times, who is doing a story
on open-source software, saying she would be coming out, and
would like to attend and talk to us.  Gulp.  Fortunately, Don
Marti was available to help set things up and do the initial
talking, and he arranged for Amy to  join us and my landlord,
Linux-based Internet cafe owner Richard Couture, for the ride in
my car from San Francisco to Palo Alto and back.

(Incidentally, Don heard from Amy early Wednesday morning, saying
that a worried Microsoft rep had tracked her down and called her
at  her hotel, asking what on earth this was about.  Pretty
efficient!)

Don picked up 400 Caldera SuSE CDs from the Oracle OpenWorld
show a block away to hand out outside Microsoft, and we spent an
hour stuffing  them with mini-BALE quarter-sheets, prior to Amy's
arrival at 4:45, when I donned my "Where do you want to 
go tomorrow?" t-shirt and we hit the freeway in my Honda.

Amy is obviously taking the measure of the open-source culture,
and was visibly bemused.  There sat the three of us, Richard with
his  welcome-to-San-Francisco cheek piercing and focussed manner,
Don doing his best straight-forward marketing guy, and me looking
slightly furry and very informal (Unix-geek sandals and all) --
in my beat-to-heck '83 Accord with bumper stickers saying "Evil
Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow" and "Xena for President", plus
Darwin and Cthulhu "fish"  stickers, plus a "Toronto WorldCon in
2003" magnet on the dash.  I do wonder what she thought of it
all.

To research her article, she had already spoken with Eric Allman
(of sendmail fame) and Eric S. Raymond -- but had not yet heard
of the  Eric Conspiracy --see
http://sagan.earthspace.net/~esr/ecsl/. 
(By chance, I had my copy of the New Hacker's Dictionary with
me, so she was duly warned of the Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs
and their sinister plans for world domination.)  She was also
scheduled to interview Linus while here in the Bay Area.

However, we were the subjects du jour, so out came the reporter's
notebook.  The big question, and also the most unexpected and
most difficult, was simply "Why?"  That is, why would we bother
to  take hours out of our lives, make extensive preparations, and
drive  fifty miles through rush-hour traffic to demonstrate for a
piece of _software_?

It is a quite logical question, I must admit, albeit one we
crazed Linux zealots would not think to ask.  We did our best.

Richard pointed out that Linux had helped make software fun
again. A market dominated by sluggish, crash-prone,
bandwidth-wasting,  inflexible, fragile NT boxes would have been
deadly.  I elaborated by saying that we enjoyed getting the word
out because we feel the superior quality, performance, and
reliability of open-source software is a crucial message -- and
that open source has no  marketing department except for us.

Most of us work in the industry in one way or another, and we've
seen first-hand the benefits, not to mention the disasters
averted, by using battle-tested technology such as Apache, bind,
SAMBA, perl, etc.  We've snuck these quietly into corporate
networks, and feel it's past time to cease hiding it.  Most of
all, networking consultants in particular (like me and Richard)
know we can make our clients happiest by using open standards. 
Deliriously happy clients means huge hourly rates, and the
ability to spend most of one's time on the beach in Tahiti.  A
Good Thing.

We arrived at the University Coffee Cafe in Palo Alto at 5:25 PM,
joining some of the usual suspects (eventually about 40 of us), 
chatting and passing out the 400 CDs.  Suddenly two unfamiliar 
guys came up behind me and said "Hi, can you tell me who's in 
charge, here?"  I said "Well, if you've come to arrest us, then 
_nobody's_ in charge."  They introduced themselves as Dan Frumin 
and Mike [surname unknown] from Microsoft, and had come over to 
our assembly point to chat with us.

Dan said he'd read our Web pages and appreciated very much the 
fact that we were telling everyone to be cool and avoid in any
way wrecking Microsoft's party.  He said he'd really like to 
buy us all a pizza dinner and a round of beer _instead_.  (We
smiled and declined.  He went on:)  Absent that, he wanted to
reassure us that they had no objection to our attending, but that
the party was full, and they needed to avoid overfilling the
inside  space.  Therefore, he had five name badges for "Silicon
Valley Linux User Group", which we were welcome to exchange among
people who wanted to come inside.

This was really very gracious of them (and smart public
relations), although many of us already had confirmed
reservations already (and  thus name tags), and most of the rest
had planned only to gather on the sidewalk (_not_ blocking the
entrance) for an impromptu party _there_, and hand out CDs and
literature to passers-by.  Also, there was a pleasant moment of
recognition when we realised that Microsoft had sent genuine
_software geeks_ to intercept us:  Dan in particular had the
ponytail and straightforward manner.  He fit right in.

Dan was particularly pleased (and relieved) that we had been
quite serious about being well-behaved and considerate.  He
warmed up progressively as the evening passed, and insisted on
buying a round of Sierra Nevada Ale for the gang at Pizza-A-Go-Go
afterwards (though he couldn't attend).  He said he used to run
Linux back in the 0.9x kernel days.  We made sure he got a CD-ROM
and an  assurance that he'd be a welcome guest at SVLUG any time.

Being among those with actual invitations and name tags, I joined
the party and linked up with some Microsoft staffers I knew from
my Compu$erve sysop days (who shall go nameless), and third-party
developers.  The general reaction to us Linuxers visible among 
them was chuckles and quiet approval -- and occasional keen
interest. Along with the inevitable WebTV sets, they had some
interesting new hardware just released for WinCE boxes (e.g., PC
Card stuff), that appears to be supportable on Linux.

The appetizers were absolutely superb.  Nothing but the best.  I 
gorged myself on sushi, roast beef, Thai-style sate chicken, and 
other goodies while my confreres were out on the sidewalk
passing  out CDs.  They even had Heineken and quite decent
Cabernet.  Ah,  that's the life.  (I hear that Microsoft was
gracious enough to  send cups of coffee out to the gang up
front.)  Somehow, the  catering staff seemed to be offering their
plates mostly to the people with Linux t-shirts.  Was that my
imagination, or were they closet Linux users?

During the drawing for door prizes, there were frequent
good-natured references to our welcome delegation.  (There was
only one really good prize, a Compaq machine.  Lots of WebTV.) 
Those whose names hadn't been picked were assured that they _had_
won Linux, at least.

Towards the end of the party, Don Marti and I rejoined the throng
up front, who relocated over to Pizza-A-Go-Go.  We had passed out
almost all of the Caldera and SuSE CDs -- with the literature
about upcoming Linux events.  We later heard that people had
driven from all over the Valley to see us and pick up CDs.  In
addition, we heard that one of the Linux sidewalk crew had seen
the Slashdot mention on Wednesday morning, and driven all the way
from San Luis Obispo to join us!

The Microsoft-bought pitcher of good beer was duly provided, but
I was driving and had to astain, even though it was going almost 
unclaimed and looked quite lonely.  Tragic.

Everyone seemed to agree -- including Dan Frumin and other
Microsoft folk we've heard from at the time and since -- that a
fun time was had by all, to the surprise of some and the delight
of many.  Well done -- in particular, to Ian Kluft and Don Marti,
to the good  folks at Caldera and SuSE, and to Hans Cathcart for
having the idea in the first place.

Today, I received a follow-up telephone call from Amy at the New
York Times.  Her article is still going forward, and she asked 
some help answering questions from a Microsoft-centrist colleague
who, in her words, "I'm trying to convert".  She said the
co-worker worked on Web sites, and wanted to know what Microsoft
provided  that's analogous to VBScript.  I referred her to PHP
(www.php.net). (I should have clarified that she'll be wanting
the downloadable file described as "i386 RPM, dynamically
loadable Apache 1.3 module", but was answering off the top of my
head.)

The other question was what Linux had that's similar to MS SQL 
Server.  I could not suppress a chuckle, and explained to Amy 
that her friend's questions were _extremely_ Microsoft-centric.
However, I pointed out, PHP has ODBC interface support built in,
which should allow her friend to communicate from Linux to his
existing SQL tables, if he wished.  I stressed that this is one
of the key points about Linux:  It provides as much
interconnectivity as possible, to everything possible.  Linux
will not dictate her choice of back-end server.

Amy asked how she acquires PHP (and for how much).  I read her
the notice on the Web site:

      So, how much does it cost?

      This may sound a little foreign to all you folks coming
      from a non-Unix background, but PHP doesn't cost anything. 
      You can use it for commercial and/or non-commercial use
      all you want.  You can give it to your friends, print it
      out and hang it on your wall or eat it for lunch.  Welcome
      to the world of Open Source software!  Smile, be happy,
      the  world is good.  For the full legalese, see the
      official license. 

When I asked, she clarified that she'd bought the Red Hat 5.2
boxed set, and would be installing it.  I therefore mentioned
that PostgresSQL would be provided and furnished already running
as part of her installation -- and that MySQL is also popular 
and not difficult to install.

No idea when her article is due out, or anything else about it,
but I'll watch for it with considerable interest.








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