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Tea party, results (fwd)
if someone is interested in more. I won't forward further stuff, it will
probably have a link from http://www.svlug.org
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 12 Nov 1998 09:31:21 GMT
From: Marc MERLIN <marc_merlin@magic.metawire.com>
To: svlug@magic.metawire.com
Subject: Tea party, results
The Silicon Valley Tea Party aka "The big 1998 linux revolt take II"
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I first want to reassure the worried reader: "Rick Moen was there". David
Miller (big time kernel hacker and former svlug speaker for those who don't
know him) gave us the pleasant surprise of also showing up.
This time we had made tentative plans a little earlier than last time (a
little more than 10 days vs a few hours). Yet, much got decided a little at
the last minute (read one day in advance to a few hours before going there).
Once again, Ian Kluft did a great job with keeping the web page up to date
(sometimes by the hour), and organizing some of the stuff, along with the
other officers.
We went there armed with about 500 Caldera and Suse CDs. Thanks to those two
for providing them in the first place.
So here's what happened:
Not to say that big brother is everywhere, but short of having microsoft
people monitoring our lists and newsgroups (with wouldn't overly surprise
me, after all they also tried a PR compain with magazines, posing as simple
users who liked microsoft products), since the announcement was somewhat
widely distributed with an announcement on freshmeat and the web page, I did
expect some microsoft people to know about it, and to be waiting for us
there.
They were actually much smarter than that, and did what I hadn't quite
expected: two microsoft people met us at the cafe where we had planned to
meet before going to the ms event.
Basically they were worried to have an unknown number of linux geeks
rampaging around their party, and kind of overwhelm the place.
Our goal wasn't obviously to ruin their party, but it's true that having 30
to 40 geeky looking people, with our crazy Sam Ockman harassing people in
suit with Linux CDs (just kidding Sam :-p), might have been somewhat
disruptive.
Their offer was to give us 5 SVLUG badges to let 5 of us in at a time, and
let us rotate. Their claim was that you actually had to have received an
invitation from them before being able to RSVP.
This may or may not have been true even though in practise, anyone who
RSVPed in time did have a badge waiting for them at the entrance, whether or
not they had received an initial invitation of microsoft.
Those who tried to RSVP later received an Email saying that they could still
register at the door, and it's only the last day that their autoresponder
said that they event was full (some thought that they just refused requests
from obvious linux people, like me when I forgot to strip out my "Microsoft
is to software what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking" signature in my first
RSVP, but that was just a conspiracy theory, someone simply modified their
script on the event day to reject further RSVPs).
My point is that it would have been possible for at least some of us (as
long as it wasn't too obvious) to RSVP at the door and get a badge.
Their second option was to invite us all to eat instead, so that none of us
wouldn't have to wait outside in the cold :-)
That was obviously a nice try, and we politely declined.
Of course the third option would have been to ignore them and try to sneak
as many of us in as we could have.
We however went with the first one because:
1) They appeared most polite and friendly and didn't entice us to go trash
the place (which we never intended to do anyway)
2) I personally thought (and others most likely also did) that having as
many of us inside as possible could have indeed been somewhat to severly
disruptive, and possibly annoying for their other guests, and we wanted
to avoid that.
3) Since they behaved politely and in a civilized way with us, we had no
reason to not return the favor, even if in this case we were dealing with
microsoft
So, we went together to the place, and about 10 of us got in (the five
badges, plus those who had registered sufficiently in advance (Rick Moen,
Don Marti, and a few others)).
During that time, we had a talk with the three reporters who where there (a
lady from New York Times, Yoshimoto-San, a Freelance Japanese journalist,
and a male freelance journalist/photographer, whose card I unfortunately
didn't get).
We answered their questions on linux, and got some pictures taken. The man
took a lot of pictures, and some should turn out to be very good, I wonder
where they're going to show up...
As for the CDs, we decided to give them from outside, while a few of us
sampled the microsoft food inside while talking to a few people, some of
which were amused by seeing us (BTW the food was pretty good).
The good news is that no one seemed annoyed to see us. People were either
indifferent or either amused, some even happy ("it's cool that you guys are
here"). That in itself proved that it was a successful evening because we
didn't apparently create negative feelings against us and linux.
Well, I can't quite say that none of the microsoft people were annoyed to
see us, but if they were, they dealt with it very well, and didn't show any
negative feelings.
The funny thing is that a couple of ladies inside actually pet tux, my
pinguin that I was carrying along with me. You have to admit that it's a
cute penguin :-)
After people had gotten in, and before they were getting out, some of us
that were outside started handing out CDs to random people who were driving
by in their cars, while the others were just talking and talking turns to
have a look inside (not that exciting by the way, but then it wasn't meat to
be in the first place).
We also took some really cool pictures, like one with Tux in front of the
microsoft logo on their door, and one with a linux CD in front of
microsoft's second 'o'. Those were taken by the professional photographer,
so I don't yet know where they're going to show up (please, Email me if you
have his card and Email).
I personally shot a roll and I should have the pictures on my web site by
98/11/12 late in the evening (sorry, my camera isn't digital...).
After most people got out and had a second shot at getting a CD from us, we
left for a local Pizza &alef; gogo. Some of us took a microsoft gift (cocktail
glass and t-shirt, both with microsoft logo). I personally got neither since
I didn't quite see where I could have used them with them having a logo and
all.
Then, some of the microsoft guys called the pizzeria where we were to pay us
a round of beers and sodas, which was obviously nice of them, and we
eventually headed home.
Conclusion: this definitely was a fun evening. As Ian said the outcome was
totally unexpected, but it turned out very well. We spread the word about
linux, and among the CDs we gave out, some people have to install it, and
some of those may even come see us during future meetings.
I have to say that the microsoft people were really cool with us. They
behaved much more intelligently than the Fry's manager who called the cops
to have us thrown out during the Win98 launch a few months ago.
Don't take me wrong, I still think their OSes are crap, along with many (but
not all) of their software products. I still think they're a monopolistic
company which thrives to crush their competition without worring too much
about laws, yet they are also very careful at not getting bad press and they
did let us get away with things like taking pictures with tux in from of
their logo (no one even told us anything).
Thanks all those who came, and see you all next time.
Marc Merlin
--
"Microsoft is to software what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking"
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ (friendly to non IE browsers)
Finger marc@merlins.org for PGP key and other contact information
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