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.

[glossary]