Gandhicon

GandhiCon is a concept in hacker culture. There is a quotation from Mohandas Gandhi, describing the stages of establishment resistance to a winning strategy of nonviolent activism, that partisans of open source and especially Linux have embraced as almost an explanatory framework for the behaviors they observe while trying to get corporations and other large institutions to take new ways of doing things seriously:
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
In hacker usage this quote has miscegenated with the U.S. military's DefCon terminology describing "defense conditions" or degrees of war alert. At GandhiCon One, the subject is being ignored. At GandhiCon Two, opponents are derisive and dismissing the idea that the person in question could ever be a threat. At GandhiCon Three, they are compelled to fight the issue in question on the merits and/or by attempting to discredit the challenger. At GandhiCon Four, the subject is winning and the opponents are arguing merely to save face or stave off complete collapse of their position. Interestingly, this is a reversal of the DefCon terminology as DefCon 5 is the most "relaxed", and DefCon 1 indicates highest alert.

Source

  • http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/GandhiCon.html

 

<< PreviousWord BrowserNext >>
hadamard's inequality
uss cummings (dd 44)
beretta 80 models
lessons of darkness
andrew boyd cummings
ernesto miranda
self (philosophy)
irish place names in other countries
conchoid
nazi songs
uss cummings
fergus, ontario
uss cummings (dd 365)
cyclic model
beretta mini pistols
ichthyosis
fuss pot
highland games
bui tin
freeza saga
william robinson (gardener)
cyprus reunification referendum, 2004
soho, birmingham
beretta 21 bobcat
spider man 2
potential well
wisden cricketer of the year
maximum wage
alfred molina
taiwan public television service foundation
ai 24 foxhunter
goble, oregon
stipule
xiu xiu
un security council resolution 446
battle of island number ten
bract
ideosphere
dolim
waclaw szybalski
great thick knee
list of works in critical theory
baltimore class cruiser
powers