EDIT : I have re-published this article because it explains a lot about my intentions for this site, and because I had performed a lot of work on the site to tweak it to my liking.
Greetings!
After an exhausting few days of work on the site, with the added ingredient of a medical emergency with my son, I now announce the addition of forum capabilities to the site.
The main purpose of the forums will be to produce an effective antidote to any anti-Linux and anti-Open Source FUD: antiFUD
Inspired by the utterly fantastic work and accomplishments of Pamela Jones of Groklaw - thank you PJ for your inspiration!
Here’s how I intend for this site to work ;
It will be a community effort. A community of people who, like me, see the benefit and importance of Free (as in Freedom) and Open Source software, and who want to do something to help keep that sentiment alive.
The method utilized on this site will be as follows;
1) An item of FUD will be discovered somewhere on the internet, whether it be a “news item” or an “opinion piece”.
2) The link to that item will be posted to the antiFUD discussion forums, complete with a description of the FUD involved.
3) Careful dissection and discussion of the FUD will ensue, and the community builds up a well-researched, backed up with factual information, antidote to the FUD.
4) When it is decided that the article/opinion piece in question has been suitably demolished, a blog entry will be created on the site’s front page with an antiFUD article to counteract the FUD article in question. Careful consideration will be made to be polite, courteous, honorable, and accurate, in the crafting of the blog article. The antiFUD article is now published and available on the internet, available to ANYONE to use, whether it’s an I.T. worker in a company who needs to explain to their bosses about the FUD that their boss read and has been influenced by said FUD, or just to anyone who needs some good fact-based information.
As you can see, the concept is reminiscent of Groklaw - it’s a community effort - but it’s more of a universal antiFUD campaign. Rather than being focused mainly on points of law, and lawsuits against Linux and the GPL as per Groklaw, I’m aiming for this site to be used to counteract the seemingly increasing amount of FUD-laden articles being published on the internet. Not only that, but rather than having the main articles on the front page being issued from one main person, I’m aiming that the community itself forms the basis of the eventual permanently placed antiFUD blog items. We’ll all do the research, dissection, and discussion together.
This is an experiment - I don’t think it’s been done like this before - all I’ve seen is a top-down concept whereby an initial post is made, followed by a discussion, and subsequent articles are created if new information comes to light in the previous discussion. Here, I want the articles to be created by the discussion first, then published.
Please, feel free to register to the site and start your lookout for FUD articles.
You’ll always find the link to the forum on the left hand side at the top of the page. Here’s a link to the forum from this article.
Finally, as this experiment goes on, no doubt there will be changes galore as the site and community evolution goes forward, so, please accept my apologies in advance if there is any disruption to the site.
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