gandhicon

1 definition found

gandhicon - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  GandhiCon
  
  
     There is a quote from Mohandas Gandhi, describing the stages of
     establishment resistence 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, you're being ignored. At GandhiCon Two,
     opponents are laughing at you and dismissing the idea that you could
     ever be a threat. At GandhiCon Three, they're fighting you on the
     merits and/or attempting to discredit you. At GandhiCon Four, you're
     winning and they are arguing to save face or stave off complete
     collapse of their position.