Free Software As Nigerian Scam

djeaux writes "In the November 4 issue of Syllabus, Howard Strauss, manager of technology strategy and outreach at Princeton University, presents 'The FREE, 0% APR, Better Sex, No Effort Diet' in which he scattershoots at open source software. The Nigerian scam is part of his imagery, leading to a great quote: 'While you are installing your free open source software you may want to write Mrs. Ahmed a check. Her $8.5 million will help pay for the real cost of that free software.' Elsewhere, Strauss describes the open source community as 'a smattering of teenagers too young to work at Redmond, hackers, virus creators, and a menagerie of others with whom you will feel great pride in entrusting your IT infrastructure.'" Not everyone at Princeton agrees.

Comments

Well now...

[kid-noodle]

That sounds like a fair minded, well reasoned and educated comment entirely lacking in FUD...

So stupid, it's not even wrong..

[k98sven]

Is there anyway I can moderate this entire story -1: Flamebait?

Re:So stupid, it's not even wrong..

[GammaTau]

Is there anyway I can moderate this entire story -1: Flamebait?

I'm not sure if it's a flamebait. Maybe it was intended as a flamebait but failed? At least I don't even understand what was the point he was trying to make. Yeah, he doesn't seem to like free software but it was more like random mindless babbling than anything like a good parody or a flamebait.

Now that I look what the article says about the author, "Howard Strauss is the manager of technology strategy", I'm thinking just what the heck is that kind of a job title? Is it a somewhat humorous AI experiment some Princeton students have submitted to Slashdot? Or is this one of the cases where one just has to say "60 lines of LISP can hardly be called an AI"?

timothy is an evil man

[NotAnotherReboot]

I see the plan, post four links to Princeton servers and watch them suffer. Make them pay for their insolence!

Blackboard!!??

[illogic]

"instead of having highly paid programmers at... Blackboard build your critical university systems, you can have scores of software gurus scattered around the globe working completely independently build them for you FOR FREE."

Oh, you didn't. You mean free vending machines for life Blackboard?

So, what does he recommend?

[sharkey]

We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support

Sounds like he's bitching about moving to Windows.

Re:Article in case of /.'ing

[nutznboltz]

Is there a special prize for 1st post and karma whore in one?

Re:analogies substituted for evidence

[canajin56]

"Propritary software relies on keeping things secret. Terrorist cells rely on keepin things secret. So really, when you buy a copy of Windows, you may as well make the cheque out to one O. b. Laden."

How's that? ;) Loose, irrelavent analogies are fun!

Princeton, clown college (Simpsons)

[d2ksla]

Bob: You wanted to be Krusty's sidekick since you were five! What
about the buffoon lessons, the four years at clown college.

Cecil: I'll thank you not to refer to Princeton that way.

Re:I let this particular parody get to me ....

[archeopterix]

Worse, that -1 Flamebait drivel included this nonsense:

Hey, don't give the trolls ideas!

This is the alluring pitch of BSD software. We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but it's BSD and we get the ability to modify the source code ourselves, something that is extremely dangerous to do, was discredited decades ago, and few people do anyway.