17 lines
928 B
Plaintext
17 lines
928 B
Plaintext
GandhiCon
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There is a quote from Mohandas Gandhi, describing the stages of
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establishment resistence to a winning strategy of nonviolent activism, that
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partisans of open source and especially Linux have embraced as almost an
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explanatory framework for the behaviors they observe while trying to get
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corporations and other large institutions to take new ways of doing things
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seriously: First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight
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you. Then you win. In hacker usage this quote has miscegenated with the U.S
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military's DefCon terminology describing defense conditions or degrees of
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war alert. At One, you're being ignored. At Two, opponents are laughing at
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you and dismissing the idea that you could ever be a threat. At Three,
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they're fighting you on the merits and/or attempting to discredit you. At
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Four, you're winning and they are arguing to save face or stave off complete
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collapse of their position.
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