[Scale-planning] Free Software Representation at SCaLE

[Phil Dibowitz]

On 01/25/2012 06:00 AM, Mark Holmquist wrote:
> I would much rather focus on
> the intense focus, at the conference, on Open Source to the exclusion of
> everything else, than on the exclusion of any one community. 

You've said this several times now, but you haven't said WHAT you believe
we've done that favors one part of the community over any other with the
exception of our name, which we're not going to change 10 years in.

Other than that, it is entirely unclear to me how you think we've favored
anyone over anyone else. We don't generally _ask_ people to speak, we hold a
call for papers, and then pick what we hope will be the best. There's no bias
towards one side of the F/OSS community or the other.

Again: I'm very curious as to _what_ you think we've done to favor one part of
the community. As others have pointed out, we've had speakers from every side
of the community including the FSF. The ratio is pretty reflective of who
decides to submit papers in our call for papers which is _very_ clearly open
to _all_ - from the FSF to Microsoft. I would argue we are one of the most
*inclusive* conferences out there.

Please be very specific. Do you think we throw all FSF papers in the trash? Or
perhaps you're trying to imply we're being paid off by Oracle? Or perhaps you
think we all secretly work for some company with an anti-FS agenda? Which
isn't to say your trying to accuse anyone of anything so horrible - I'm simply
trying to show what a specific example would look like. What *precisely* are
you suggesting? It's very difficult to show you counter examples when I (or
we) don't understand what exact think you believe we are doing. Because what I
see is us advertising all over the place a call for papers... getting in a
ton, many of our chairs spending countless time reading through them in their
spare time, and picking a representative subset, not based on agenda, but
based on what talks and speakers in the past have actually been popular, what
appears to be well written, etc.

-- 
Phil Dibowitz                             phil at ipom.com
Open Source software and tech docs        Insanity Palace of Metallica
http://www.phildev.net/                   http://www.ipom.com/

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter
 and those who matter don't mind."
 - Dr. Seuss


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