Real-life Stories from the Open Source Software Frontline

I spoke at the Open Source Software (OSS) Week seminar yesterday (December 6th). At Auditorium IPTEKS Institut Teknologi Bandung, four speakers, including yours truly, shared their experiences in OSS socialization.

Two cases worth noted (the dialogs and scenes are imaginary, but the situations were real):

#1: The Police are holding sudden inspections; sometimes so sudden, they forgot to give proper know-hows to their own officers. An OSS-using guy got dragged in such inspection. His notebook used Linux as its operating system. The officer gave a hard look and asked, "Where's the license?"

The guy was taken aback, "License? You mean like an authentication label? It's Linux. An open source software. You don't need that."

"Sorry. You've got to have a license." Thus the officer took the notebook as evidence.


#2: Another guy brought his friend some CDs containing applications. The friend noticed some of the applications are proprietary. He warned, "You might get in trouble if you install these in your notebook, y'know?"

"Why?"

"Well, they're pirated, for one."

The guy took it personally, "They ARE NOT! They're legal! I bought them fair and square! I even got the receipt right here!"

The friend took a glance. It was a receipt for "3 CDs - Rp15,000." (Below US$1.5).

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If you're among the OSS socialization frontliners, you might laugh. But the joke's on you: these are the guys you should aim your campaigns at.