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Date:      Mon, 13 Sep 1999 11:53:34 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Brett Taylor <brett@peloton.runet.edu>
To:        Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Cc:        "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net>, Stephen McKay <syssgm@detir.qld.gov.au>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: When they came for Brett
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909131137350.13530-100000@peloton.runet.edu>
In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.19990912185632.04af8df0@localhost>

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Hi

On Sun, 12 Sep 1999, Brett Glass wrote:

> At 04:47 PM 9/12/99 -0400, Brett Taylor wrote:

> >This is not always true.  If you form your questions/comments so that they
> >are very very specific he will ignore them.  He recently said he'd been
> >doing a lot of advocacy and Jordan, among others, noted that we haven't
> >seen any of these articles.

> That's because I already answered the same question for someone else, 
> not more than a week ago, on this list. 

Okay - I certainly missed that answer.  Scrolling back through the lists
and such I found your reply (and thanks to Donald Tyson for forwarding it
to me).  

Having gone through your links, I found _one_ article that was recent -
July 12, 1999 in Smart Reseller.  I certainly don't recall seeing the link
to that story ever posted here, but there you go.  That said, this is
another "GPL vs. BSD" article which IMO isn't needed - this has been
beaten to death innumerable times and frankly I regret Daemon News playing
this up as much as we have.  All this ever does is start flames.  It
certainly doesn't cause legions of people who use Linux to switch over.

Note here that both Jordan and I had been asking about _recent_ articles
and this is the only recent thing I could find (other than all of the
talkback on zdnet and the occasional times I've seen you in /. comments. 

In my opinion, and of course this is my opinion, Jordan's work at cons,
getting interviews, and handing out buttons does a lot more to switch
people than constantly harping on the GPL.  While I don't particularly
like the GPL, I can't see how preaching to the masses will cause them to
suddenly abandon it.  

In my opinion effective advocacy is done hand to hand.  Talking to
individual people or groups of users and showing them how BSD is
better/easier/more powerful works. You said at one point that you have a
users group there so you are certainly doing this.  In addition I think
you can do effective advocacy in print by telling people why BSD is better
at _______, rather than just saying it has a better license.

> Funny: I've noted that when I repeat myself for the benefit of people
> who have ignored my earlier postings, those who wish to discredit me
> -- or discourage others from reading my messages -- claim that I do
> nothing but say the same things over and over. But if I don't respond
> to the redundant queries, I'm told that I must not have a good answer.
> Aha! Catch-22! This is what's known as being "trolled." The object is
> either to discredit the target, wear him or her out, or waste his or
> her time. Your earlier message seemed well-meaning and friendly, but
> after this one I must ask: is this your intent as well? I hope not.

No but if I specifically asked you I expected that you might, in private
email, send me a list of your recent publications.  I didn't figure that
was much to ask, especially since you could have just forwarded me your
email to Donald (since I missed that - my fault) or just told me to go dig
through the list.  I'm sorry I missed your post.  But I also wanted an
actual list, not "go search here."

Anyway, enough of this.  Good luck on your project.

Brett
*****************************************************
Brett Taylor             brett@peloton.runet.edu    *
Dept of Chem and Physics			    *
Curie 39A	(540) 831-6147                      *
*****************************************************



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