Broadcast 2000 - An Open Source Tragedy

[zscoundrel]

All this takes is education.  When my wife and I were planning to adopt 
a child, we visited with our congressperson  - Rep. Dennis Moore - at 
one of his 'meet-and-greet' meetings.  He was meeting with constituents 
across his district to see what he (or his office) could do for them.  
We wanted to get the adoption tax exemption increased from $5k to $10k 
and remove the earnings cap because we felt the money would be better 
used by the people adopting to support the children than some useless 
government program or gold plated coffee pots for the DOD.

My wife and I arrived with a quarter inch thick folder of information, 
examples, research articles and HARD FACTS to support our case, and a 
position paper that briefly and CLEARLY expressed our view and asked for 
specific actions on his part.  

Let me note that 98% of the people at the meeting were whiny-hiney's 
that just wanted to bitch about how bad X, Y or Z had been treating 
them.   All they wanted was to sit on the couch, tell a sad story,  and 
have everything served up to them on a silver platter.  We were close to 
the end of the line and the frustration on his face and the face of his 
assistance was quite obvious in spite of their efforts to mask it. When 
they saw all the solid information my wife had gathered, they were 
impressed.  When they realized that we were politely ASKING for support, 
rather than demanding they do something, they were tickled pink!

Six weeks later we received a letter of acknowledgment that also 
announced that he had joined - as a co-signer on a bill - with the EXACT 
features we asked for.  He also announced in his regular letter to 
constituents his position on the bill, and it was worded almost exactly 
like the position in our position paper.   We have contacted his office 
a couple of times when we have had trouble with monolithic government 
bureaucracies, and they have been able to resolve the issue and light a 
fire under the lead bottomed bureaucrats to get them moving again. 

Our efforts at bringing Linux to the world MUST have support in the 
halls of congress, but the only way it will happen is if we quit 
bitching about it and start writing letters.  We need to tell them - or 
show them - how much better open-source is and ASK them to help us by 
passing laws that favor open-source over over the interests of 
monopolistic (criminal???) organizations.  But of course, this will 
require us to figure out what we actually want!

One more thing to consider:.  A letter to the their political party or 
their reelection committee with a check is a great way to say thank you 
if you do get a positive response! 

IOCON at aol.com wrote:

> In order for you to change the law you have to elect politicans who are in line with your 
veiws...And as you mentioned earlier the (lay-man) or the majority of voters don't understand 
computers nor the law...Besides big corps control the politicans and therefore the laws so the 
illusion that ordinary thinking citizans can changes the laws is a cruel jokes at best.
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
At 20, I was liberal, because I had so little to lose and so much to gain.
by 40, I was conservative, because I had so much to lose and so little to gain.
Isn't it amazing what 20 years of hard work and experience will do for ones' point of view?