[long non rant] Re: [ILUG] CALIBRE

[Bryan O'Donoghue]

> The CALIBRE people very clearly haven't, so we've a choice between
> a) they don't realise they're not in Kansas
> b) they don't think there are any native inhabitants to ask
> c) they don't think Kansas vs. not-in-Kansas is important.

Perhaps so. However I think that we shouldn't prejudge the thing.

To quote from

http://www.electricnews.net/frontpage/news-9551214.html

"There are very good reasons to back Open Source software, it's public 
infrastructure, just like roads or railways," said the University of 
Limerick's Professor Brian Fitzgerald.

Now, in a very real sense, co-ordinate fora like these, while possibly 
not necessary to the development model.. *_are_* in a real sense 
necessary to make OSS palletable to the Marketing and Administrative 
people, who instinctively mistrust techies who speak of revolution.

If it's backed by 'official' or semi-official quasi-governmental 
institutions, which can rubber stamp and EU logo onto some sort of 
extollation of OSS, then, that is a good thing for bringing OSS and 
associated OSes to McWorld, at large.

Basically, right or wrong, in order to embrace something, people have to 
feel like they have a fingerprint in it somehow.. I think the Danish 
have some sort of saying about that.. in this case, if some sort of 
McIntegrated-business-friendly-EU-sponsored forum, who's stated function 
is to "help" Open source in some fashion, I think that's a good thing, 
even if it's not eventually meaningfully effective.

There is, after all, no such thing as bad publicity, and worst case, 
that's what something like Calibre would be, assuming it didn't even 
slightly dint how OSS was developed. Publicity, is shiny, it's new.. and 
right or wrong, a bit of well placed publicity _probably_ does more to 
convince that reluctant IT manager to let you play with your favourite 
OSS derivitive on project(x).

Mores the better.