...In an intense debate over the Lifting of the Curtain on Boston College's involvement with Microsoft, I came very close to going public with information about the belief that BU became a Gold Partner with Microsoft if they never did an Open Source training again. The urging from KnowProSe's author made so much sense. Ultimately, we both backed off because theDesktop Linux Consortium did not want to start a war. Yet so many people wanted this information out... I never heard a noise about this afterwards, and the dominant Open Source figure who asked us to remain quiet about it didn't seem to deem it necessary to say much about it afterward - publicly or privately. It's the white elephant in the center of table that nobody wished to speak of. And after rereading Tom's blog entries, I have come to a conclusion which is probably not obvious to most. Part of the strength of Free Software and Open Source has always been in being open - transparent - and, as Muhammed Ali tells the personification of 'Linux' in the commercial: Speak your Mind! Don't Back Down! But there's all this strategy talk. The truth is that the strength of Free Software has been about meeting challenges head on. So, I think that we are our own worst enemy as advocates. Why should we not stand up and say, "Hey, we don't believe that is right" when we see things we don't agree with? Certainly, we shouldn't be asses about it. But tactfully dealing with something head on is much better than ignoring it. We are our own worst enemy. And we can't blame Microsoft for that. Posted by Taran at January 25, 2004 11:36 PM http://www.knowprose.com/node/77