[ubuntu-us-ma] The Free Software, Open Source promise: what FOSS means for non-coders

[Savvas Radevic]

>> > When explaining this to people I use the analogy of a car

 Really useful -- I will probably use it sometime in one of my
persuading attempts.
 Not long ago, during a discussion with a friend of mine, he was
complaining that Ubuntu was too difficult for him and that he was
going to uninstall it. A week passed by and he was still complaining.
Out of the blue, while eating a tuna sandwich, I came with this
analogy and told him:
 "Listen, Linux is like tuna fish. There are people that are allergic
to tuna fish and people that don't like it -- once they try it, they
simply never try it again. Some others like tuna with some lemon,
others with green salad and two slices of bread, making tuna even
tastier. Now, I like my tuna with all of the above."
 I took a big bite somewhere here. :P
 "You became accustomed to Windows and now hate the taste... or the
look & feel of other operating systems. Since you can't be allergic to
Ubuntu, and from what I can see you are still in doubt and
complaining, you surely can add some flavour to it, make it run 'your
way'. It's customisable, but it's new and you can ask me questions or
post them at a forum to make it better, to suit your taste."
 I was smiling during a small pause, I couldn't believe the perfect
analogy I came up with!
 "And since you have a lot of companies packing their own tuna fish
cans, you surely must be able to find one tuna fish can that suits
your taste. Likewise, Ubuntu is not the only Linux operating system,
they're called distributions -- or distros for short -- and you have
OpenSUSE, Debian, Linux Mint if you want to spice it up a bit... the
list is endless"

 Another week passed, he tried OpenSUSE. From what I was told, he was
having hardware problems on a laptop. Well, he is still using it on a
daily basis while browsing the Internet. :)
 Analogies are a perfect way to make your point!