Boycott Novell Protesters Manhandled In India 360
James Mathew writes "This is an interesting story from Kerala, India, where the ruling Communist Party organized a national conference in its efforts to hijack the Free Software Movement, which has enviable roots in the state. They got Novell to sponsor it. On the second day of the conference, a few free software activists who displayed posters against Novell were manhandled by the organizers and police — typical of what is expected from them. Most of the snaps taken during the scuffle were forcefully deleted by the organizers, after seizing the protesters' mobile phones. Still they couldn't delete all. Here is another blow-by-blow account."
Re:Boycott Boycott Novell (Score:2, Interesting)
BoycottNovell - the sad truth (Score:5, Interesting)
Look, zealous protesters on private property and zealous policemen aside, Roy Schestowitz is just a kid with massive amounts of time on his hands and a grudge the size of Ireland. He's an unemployed college dropout who lives with his parents (I'm not kidding here) and his credibility level is less than zero. Occasionally he'll write up something interesting, but with his seemingly 24/7/365 posting activity (just head on to COLA [google.com] to get an idea) most of what he writes is just self-referential gobbledygook of no value whatsoever. Six or seven thousand-word-plus posts per day? No way.
Anyone who thinks Microsoft made Hans Reiser kill his wife [boycottnovell.com], claims he turned down a "six figure" job because they asked him for a Word document [boycottnovell.com] or posts things like [digg.com] these [digg.com] shouldn't be taken seriously. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and that's what he banks on. The rest is really just his inexperience, insane hatred and child-like demeanor showing through.
That blog is nothing more than an endless stream of misrepresentations, thinly veiled lies, witch hunts [boycottnovell.com] and weird "THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD BE SCARED OF" prose, accentuated by what I suppose he thinks are "funny" photoshopped images of people and things he thinks are out to get him. A few days ago he wrote up a storm about all the journalists he estimated had been "bribed" by Microsoft because they got evaluation laptops with Windows 7, and a few of those people actually humoured him by stopping by and explaining why they wouldn't throw away decades of journalistic experience and reputation for a $2,000 laptop, but he just ignored them. Hey, he's right and he knows it.
Linux.com featured [linux.com] an article by Bruce Byfield on this. Roy has a retinue of about half a dozen hanger-ons why post up a storm whenever and wherever anyone criticizes his abrasive "advocacy", which can be seen clearly there... don't miss the fact that our very own favorite troll [slashdot.org] is also chummy with him (I mean if you needed an excuse). It seems he does these days [slashdot.org] is post [slashdot.org] links [slashdot.org] to Schestowitz's blog with his fourteen accounts anyway.
I'm sure it's important to keep an eye out for Microsoft and all, but by god, this guy is just bad news for the FOSS community. He brings out the worst of the "OMG I HATE MICROSOFT, I AM ANGRY AND I'M GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!" crowd. On purpose, I'm sure. Because the more abrasive he becomes, the more people dislike him and the more he can claim he's being "stalked" and "targeted" by the Evil Empire (TM). That kid is trapped in a vicious circle he built for himself. He needs to take a deep breath, go outside and play or something. He's so desperate and impatient to make a name for himself but he goes about it with such incompetence (volume != quality) that sometimes I think he must be sponsored by someone or something like that. Hell, he's already claiming Microsoft and Novell are directly responsible for all this.
Anyway, teh internet is serious business and all that...
Re:Alternative Viewpoint (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:3, Interesting)
T.I.A.
This is India.
Hey common it would happen anywhere in the world.
Try spreading anti-microsoft pamphlets in a microsoft conference and you will be escorted out by a security team. And will be "manhandled" if you refuse to.
None of the photos show any kind of unnecessary violence. Unless those photos were deleted as said in TFA.
Re:Boycott Boycott Novell (Score:4, Interesting)
I think your missing the point.
Novell is being productive and an asset to the open source community while the best the protesters will do is stop that. They are claiming to be helping the OSS community by chasing the developers, hackers and supporters away. That's sort of like giving your baby up for adoption to a family financially and morally worse off then you are and expecting it to have a better life.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:3, Interesting)
Can we at least agree that they used physical force to silence the other side of the debate?
Re:SW Patent Pact put Novell outside the community (Score:5, Interesting)
I really don't see why this is being modded up.
Yes, I understand that you have some vitriolic hatred toward Mono and consider developers working on it to be a source of wasted talent on what you consider to be a useless piece of software. So what? Others disagree and happen to like Mono for whatever other reason.
Novell is in an interesting position, where they started out as proprietary software developers and developed a rather rock solid business model that gave them some huge piles of cash for awhile. The world shifted and frankly Mircosoft is largely to blame for the fact that the earlier businesses that Novell was involved with died a hard death. Novell even tried to compete with offering a better product and using hard-nosed sound engineering principles, only to get shafted by Microsoft when they deliberately put in software that would screw up the Novell network protocols into their Windows OS suites.
I could get into more, but Novell certainly isn't "in bed with Microsoft", and in fact has found a rather interesting way to insulate itself from Microsoft's tactics: embrace and join with the open source software movement. I think it is a stinking genius move on their part, and without moving to supporting open source software, Novell would no longer even exist as a company... or certainly would be looking at auctioning off most of their office furniture (as they already have).
Novell here is the victim of Microsoft harassment, and the reason they are acting they way that they do is precisely out of sheer survival and based on their history.
Furthermore, this still doesn't justify why it was necessary for these protesters to be jerks and disrupt a conference, exhibiting behavior that wouldn't be acceptable in any other "free" country elsewhere in the world either. If this had happened at a technology conference in Las Vegas, I wouldn't have expected anything different (or perhaps the LVPD would be a little more rough).
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:3, Interesting)
I appreciate your interest in Indian politics and the possibly more objective viewpoint you have as a person outside the country, but I really must mention a few things:
Also, there are a lot of things that are wrong with Kerala. It is more of a case in bad governance and horrible land planning than a failure of Communist-style policies. Land reforms have worked well elsewhere in the country. They were necessary, because after the British Raj, a few people held a large amount of arable land, and everyone had to live a painful life as a share-cropper. In the prosperous states, land reforms have worked well, and even in West Bengal (the CPI(M) stronghold, where they've committed some horrible atrocities) the Communist Party stayed in power on the backs of some well thought out reforms.
Anyway, we digress, the issue in this particular case, though, seems to be the same that pervades all levels of Indian society: the old is automatically good, and must be shown 'respect'.
PS: Just thought this is necessary, seeing as I've been scathing. I love this country, which is why I criticise it so much.