I have to hold my hand up to this and plead guilty. For many years, the free and open source software (Ill call it FOSS for short!) world has been pretty insular. For many of us, the moves that Canonical and the Linux Foundation et al have made to try and take us mainstream have come as a shock.
I think it's born of frustration sometimes, the debate is complex at times, and it means that shorthand can become part of our heard mentality. And for sure, we are more guilty of it than our counterparts advocating Microsoft products and methods.
Reading this, I for one have realised that if we are to discuss the matter in a way that's in any way productive, we (the FOSS community) need to stop resorting to things like the '$', and actually make cogent points. We've got to make reasoned arguments pointing out why we think Synaptic and apt-get is a better 3rd party software delivery method. We've got to be polite in pointing out why we think a community can support and develop software as a stronger model than defined corporations.
Most of all we've got to acknowledge that there are no black and white, wrong or rights here. For example, I bet I'm not the only person who's had XP boxes working for literally years without a blue screen or a rebuild, the kind of stability record that we claim as our exclusive territory when that isn't always so. A stunning aceivement considering what a massively broad church the MS usergroup is. So when we address people coming from a differing point of view, us FOSS people need to realise the subective nature of the discussions.
