Comments on: I’m Not Boycotting FOSDEM About Novell, So Please Stop Saying That

By: Boycott Novell » IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: January 30th, 2009 - Part 1

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 03:58:34 +0000

[...] man’s upset.. I’m Not Boycotting FOSDEM About Novell, So Please Stop Saying That < http://www.news.software.coop/im-not-boycot… [...]

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:09:55 +0000

@Andy Smith – I don’t know what article you’re reading. Novell gets a mention in the second paragraph of mine, but it was mostly a “can anyone sort that out?” post. I think FOSDEM’s only free as in door cost, unless you want a rather extreme experience.

@AlexH – I’m not sure. I wonder if some of the factors are similar to the “denying terrorists the oxygen of publicity” argument which I also can’t decide about just now.

By: AlexH

AlexH — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:22:05 +0000

I wonder what you think of the idea of selectively “boycotting”? That is, not giving your money to a business, but also not disengaging from them completely.

It seems to me that a successful boycott is both carrot and stick: for me, sponsoring fosdem is undoubtedly a good thing, and should be encouraged. If you don’t encourage the good things by disengaging over the bad things, it almost balances it out (imho anyway!)

By: Andy Smith

Andy Smith — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:34:29 +0000

Yes indeed how could anyone have misunderstood you when you were so clear in complaining about the lack of value for money in a free conference.

Then there was your point about the useless corporate swag that gets distributed. Only not at FOSDEM, because you were talking about a different conference!

After you then spent the whole rest of the article going on about Novell, how anyone could have linked “not going to fosdem” and Novell is truly perplexing…