Chris DiBona on the Rally

Hi all! You missed the -best- time. This idea came about around 3pm, and we had about 50 people show up with signs and banners and pamphlets. We gave out over 500 copies of SuSe linux to people and we -really- pissed off the manager at frys.

I was the one who handled the cops who showed up at Fry's. They were very cool and let us alone until they finally made us go to the sidewalk, where we stayed for about 10 minutes then moved to the much cooler to protest CompUSA down the road a bit.

The management at Frys were such dorks! They call the cops and were pissed off that the cops just made us go to the sidewalk. They sent one of thier security drones to compusa to warn them, but CompUSA was cool. They called the cops too, but the cops did not show up. One of the police at the Fry's was too cool, he said "So linux huh?" and when he left "Maybe I'll try it out. Good luck with your system!"

The best part was putting down the Fry's guy, he was obviously taken aback by it all, and he was like "If your marketing people had just called us up we could have accomodated your company." Duh. I replied "Linux is Free, this is how we do it. We wanted to publicize the alternatives." At this point I told the fry's guy that it would be best if we discussed everythign through the police, as nothign good would come of us discussing things between us. I mean he basically wanted us gone, and we wanted to stay.

The cops were way groovy. They got a kick out of the whole thing.

Oh, the MS rep at CompUSA was soooooooo pissed. You should have seen him. Everyone was walking into CompUSA with pamphlets and such in thier hand from us.

You should have been there. Follow the links, we'll have pictures soon! (Thanks to John Beale and others.) And Video.