I was recently given an old HP Omnibook xe4100 laptop. It’s got a 1.1GHz Celeron CPU, 512MiB RAM and a 6GB hard disk. So it’s not blazingly fast, but it’s good enough for the journey to and from work on the train. I have an Ubuntu sticker on the lid of it which anyone facing me can see when I am using the machine.
Last friday I was sat on the train, headphnoes on whilst I typed on my laptop. I noted when another passenger got on the train that he glanced at the sticker a few times. It looked like he wanted to talk to me, but my headphones made that difficult for him. So I removed my headphones and packed away my MP3 player. Pretty much straight away he said “I appreciate the sticker”.
He told me that he was aware of Ubuntu, but used CentOS ( a RedHat derived distribution mainly designed for servers ) with Oracle installed on it. We talked about commercial software deployments on Linux, support infrastructure for open source products and how developers are often the bain of system admins lives 
When I asked if he was involved in the Linux community in any way he said that he had three children under the age of 5 and as such had no time to do anything like that. That’s great in a way. It means that there are people out there who have Linux installed and it works well enough for them that they don’t want to visit a LUG, don’t feel the need to join a mailing list or sit in an IRC channel.
This is just like the vast majority of Windows users who generally don’t contribute back to the community because they just want to use the computer as a tool. Now of course there’s an argument that people who don’t give back are leeching in some way, but equally once the system works many people don’t feel they need to.
Should we be trying to coerce these people to contribute back, or is it good enough that they use the software for their own personal gain? Should the community be made more accessible to the average joe? Should we just let them carry on being users, oblivious to the people around them? What if they “don’t have time” and would rather spend time with the family?
6 Comments
You say that he is using Oracle. Surely then he is adding to the number of Oracle users that use Linux. That makes Oracle aware of the importance of this platform, and thus encourages them to support it better.
I am sure there is a ‘glass half empty’ alternative argument, but lets keep looking on the bright side.
Well done for making the effort help start the conversation. I am sure it made his journey to work more enjoyable.
Although he’s “only” using the ‘free’ edition, so I guess he only contributes to the web downloads of the installer and further patches/fixes. I don’t know if Oracle measure these things or only go by pay-for licenses?
I think his journey from (it was the way home) work was made even more enjoyable by the few cans of beer he had whilst talking to me
I agree with this. He is another user, therefore another tester who might potentially report a bug or reply on a forum. There is also the fact that he might tell people that he uses linux, which spreads the word.
I don’t contribute code, but I run ubunutu on a server, and always help someone in a forum/irc channel if I can help. It is my way of giving back to the community.
Although this guy might not contribute at the moment, it isn’t to say that he won’t in the future…
Linux should be made usable to the average joe, which Is why I support what ubuntu is doing so much.
Maybe he downloaded the iso via bittorrent? A small, but valid contribution.
I’d rather that he used Linux and didn’t contribute if the alternative would be for him to use Windows instead. Sure, the more people that contribute the better, but even by using Linux then perhaps people around him will take notice of it. Perhaps his children will grow up using Linux instead of Windows, and who knows, perhaps one of his kids will contribute more.
I think just using Linux is contributing in a way. If I wrote a bit of OSS and no one used it, I’d be sad and have a feeling of emptiness. However, if people used it, that’d be great and I’d feel satisfied!
I think just using Linux is a positive thing.. perhaps other people will look at the guys laptop and say ‘whats this?’ etc…maybe that will spawn more linux users…which can only be a good thing!