Linux Illiteracy

Doc Searls points to a comment about Linux that really seems stupid. Let me more it more accurate - it seems stupid to people who are education about Linux. Others are still in the dark, and believe me that people still doubt Linux because it is free. People relate the money spent to higher reliability than the genuine effort poured in by brilliant contributors because it is free.

In our everyday dealings, we do associate money with function and quality. This has been one of the biggest hurdles in understanding and adopting free and open source software. This is pure illiteracy, or even misliteracy, that either reads too much or too little into it. It is easier to deal with illiteracy than with misconceptions and misunderstandings. When I try to promote Linux within my circle of acquaintances I get these gasps, raised eyebrows and disbelief when I say that you can just download it from the Internet and start using it.

And I feel it is we, who really believe in Linux, should bear the responsibility of educating people about Linux. People who do not know what is an OS, who do not want to know about drivers or standards or worse, people who have wrong ideas about them. The best way, in my opinion, is to not talk technology. It is to explain to them using their language, convince them that they can do their tasks using Linux. This is the language that will help them realize the ROI. This comment woke me to the fact that we have to prove the bottom-line justification of Linux as a solution, and it does not matter if we are in the Web 2.0 era.