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Free Software As Nigerian Scam

Posted by timothy on from the this-is-satire-right dept.

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.

3 of 685 comments (clear)

  1. Who is Linux & Open Source? by thisissilly · · Score: 5, Informative
    From a 1999 survey published in Linux Journal of kernel hackers:
    • 1 had completed just basic public education (high school)
    • 15 had attended college or technical school
    • 23 had an undergraduate degree (B.S., B.A., etc.)
    • 19 had attended graduate school
    • 15 had a graduate degree (M.S., M.A., etc.)
    • 9 had done further graduate work
    • 19 had a terminal degree (Ph.D., M.D., etc.)

    and as for programming experience
    • 4 had 1 year
    • 10 had 2-4 years
    • 31 had 5-9 years
    • 40 had 10-20 years
    • 16 had 20+ years
    Then there is the Boston Consulting Group's Hacker Survey, which found
    "Contrary to popular belief about hackers, the open source community is mostly comprised of highly skilled IT professionals who have on average over 10 years of programming experience."
    Occupation Chart
    Hardly what Howard Strauss's article portrays.
  2. Re:Wow by Ray+Yang · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fear not. This particular personage works for OIT (Office of Information Technology), a bunch of folks who mess up the networks they're supposed to manage so badly they've been summarily banned from the CS Department.

    Did I mention that I love my regular internet service outages?

  3. About Howard and Princeton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm posting AC because I'm at Princeton. I did some checking around. According to our campus directory, he works in the Enterprise Infrastructure Services department of our IT division (OIT--Office of IT). And while the article credits him as "manager of technology strategy", I cannot find him on the OIT org. chart that you can find in our OIT's annual report. He must be some underling who's bitter.

    I intend to write his boss. I mean, I appreciate satire and parody, but as everyone has pointed out, his article is just malicious and factually false. It's filled with ad hominem attacks at students, hackers, the whole open source community. All based on a ridiculous metaphor that doesn't hold. Hell, it doesn't even make sense. If he hates young people so much, why in the world would he work in an "outreach" capacity at a university?!

    Interestingly, his department is responsible for serving the notorious PeopleSoft management and purchasing software here....roundly hated by every administrative person I know at Princeton. I only mention this because he specifically mentions PeopleSoft. OIT at Princeton is definitely a mixed bag--some outstanding services, people, and liberties (including, yes, plenty of linux support)--and some horrible policies and red tape (like, charging for every ethernet box they activate--both for students and in the depts!--AND charging for every device attached to the network! They nickle and dime like crazy).