Re: [Ambassadors] Talking points about open-source software

[Joe Brockmeier]

On 04/13/2016 05:59 PM, Nemanja Milosevic wrote:
>  Hello fellow ambassadors! :)
>  
>  As discussed in our EMEA meeting, I will be invited (most likely) to a Microsoft
> conference here in Belgrade, Serbia (1000+ developers are expected) to hold a presentation
> about .NET developer toolchain on Linux. It will be a great opportunity to promote Fedora
> and FOSS. The Fedora part I got covered, and I know what I will talk about. Mostly about
> how Fedora plays nice with many developer tools, how developer friendly in general it is
> and how it's fantastic with the frequency of tools updates. Also how nicely it
> integrates into some of the already existing Microsoft Services (like Azure)
>  
>  However the second part about open source software - I'm stumped. Does anyone here
> have any talking points or prior presentations experience on trying to "sell"
> the idea of FOSS to someone who is only making proprietary software? It's a pretty
> hard topic and I would love to hear some of people with greater experience in promoting
> the FOSS way of thinking than myself.
>    
>  I just have no idea on where to even start. I thought about talking about some great open
> source libraries for .NET developers and that would be fine since I am using many of them
> and have only had great experiences with them, but than comes the issue of licensing and
> selling open source software as a part of a closed software solution. Most of the
> mentioned libraries are GPL licensed if I remember correctly so you see what is the
> issue.
>  
>  So in short, how would you present greatness that is the FOSS philosophy to developers
> who make a living on selling custom-made business/enterprise software.
>  
>  Any insights, tips or materials would be greatly appreciated. 
>  The conference is about a month away, and I think this is an interesting subject even if
> I don't get to present it. :)
>  
>  Thanks in advance to everyone. 
I'm CC'ing the marketing list here because the marketing list is where
talking points usually should originate. (In collaboration with
Ambassadors.)

AFAIK, we've not written up any talking points on the general goodness
of open source for this kind of purpose. But, we *should* because it'd
be a really good idea for ambassadors to spend more time talking to
audiences we haven't reached vs. audiences we have already reached.

I will send a second email with some general ideas, and start a page on
the wiki...

Best,

jzb
-- 
Joe Brockmeier | Community Team, OSAS
jzb(a)redhat.com | http://community.redhat.com/
Twitter: @jzb  | http://dissociatedpress.net/