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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.
Though it's a parody and I generally try to take those lightly, he's made one critical error that really stands out in his assertion that free software is the domain of hackers/tinkerers/students, etc. I think Howard Strauss ought to be informed of the billions of dollars being invested in free software development by major corporations, many of whom have salaried and talented employees developing such applications. His condescending attitude towards the talented programmers who have created so much of the infrastructure the Internet depends on (Linux, BSD, Apache, MySQL anyone?) is a bit infuriating, to say the least.
On another note, what is responsible for the recent surge of anti-free software propaganda? I'm sure that some could present a viable argument that nefarious sources (SCO/Microsoft/whoever) are essentially astroturfing on a media-wide scale (not like they haven't done it before), but things like this, plus the Forbes article and other critiqued rants that have been posted on Slashdot before, have me a bit worried about how the worldwide computer-using community is perceiving free software, especially when peoples' critiques contain such glaring factual errors as this particular one does.
Or does that article site seem like a scam in itself? I counted 5 ads from doubleclick (all blocked by privoxy) and another set of sponsored links at the bottom. With all the rhetoric designed to inflame linux users, it is sure to make money for them if it gets enough hits (thus getting put on /. benefits them greatly...).
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That guys animosity towards students reflects the level of customer service that most Universities provide today.
Nobody said most college students are masters of project management or the big picture, but they are a talented group of programmers. To dismiss them as worthless is to ignore a valuable and cheap source of labor. You may not want to make them PM just yet, but I gaurentee they'll work their asses off, with a little direction, more than that 30-year veteran who has become acustomed to the University's indiference towards laziness. Union YES!
Most computer science students I know haven't been corrupted yet and still have a high work ethic, they just need a little direction and be brought down a level to reality. Once they get past thinking they can change the place overnight, they make some excellent, hard working individuals.
But alas, the University I attended didn't hire any of its graduates either. While I was working there, not one of my supervisors had any sort of degree and they weren't eager to give anyone from the inside a chance upon graduation (again, I'm not talking about management positions, but I've seen plenty of entry level jobs that turned down countless grads from the Uni. I guess they don't have faith in what they teach.)
...ex-manager of technology strategy and outreach at Princeton University, one should hope. That kind of stupidity can't go unrewarded, can it?
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This article wouldn't bother me as much if it presented a single independently verifiable fact. Since it doesn't, it's a rant and nothing more. The real queston is "Why did Syllabus choose to publish it?" This guy isn't even a professor, is he? With the title of "manager of technology strategy and outreach", it sounds like he's just a department employee. Not that that invalidates his opinion, mind you! That is discredited by his vacant non-awareness of facts.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
a smattering of teenagers too young to work at Redmond
... or just too ethical. Or sensible, take your pick.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Here's a shocker: Strauss's mode of argumentation is sarcasm. He's an astonishingly inept writer, so it's not even particularly well crafted sarcasm. I don't know if this is because his understanding of the subject matter is negligible or if it's because he thought this would be the best way to make his nebulous point, but it seems sort of wasteful to engage him in any sort of debate (with or without his participation). There may be smarter and more articulate people who share his views, and it would be much more worthwhile to find them and have an intelligent discussion than it would be to waste time debunking the content implied by his article.
Article feels like one large Flamebait, but in these days of SCO lawsuits I'm never quite sure which viewpoints are satire and which are just out and out stupidity.
In any case, it does make a point that the "establishment" has a very hard time coming to terms with - Free Software can and does work. For some fraction of people, this seems to somehow represent a personal insult. Probably the same people who get upset at anyone who questions whether our current economic system is absolute perfection suggest regulation might serve some purpose after all.
Commercial software provides only two things open source software can't provide - software that is extrememly difficult to create and has a small target audience (think very high end engineering CAD software or exteremely complex movie rendering) and someone to sue if the product doesn't work as specified. That doesn't sit well with people who think capitalism is the One True Way, and just for more fun people compare open source with Communism(?!). As if the spirit of goodwill is somehow corruptive to our way of life.
So, whether the author set out to write satire, troll all of slashdot, or actually denies the evidence right in front of him, this article is quite childish and silly. The evidence that free software does work is right in front of him, if he's interested in looking. Whether he WANTS it to work might be the real issue.
Ever notice that, that some people are personally interested in the failure of open source? It seems to be an affront to them, for no reason I can discover. No one has the RIGHT to make money, and open source taking away commerical markets for software is something they'll just have to grow up and deal with. If they can't make a more compelling product that people are willing to pay for and stay ahead of volunteers, tough.
Linux/Free Software is for real. I've used it exclusively on my own machines for four years, with great success. Community spirit is powerful and can accomplish great things, and if our social system has forgotten/doesn't want to accept that then we're in some deeper trouble than just questions of software.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I have to post this every now and then, but for those of you not in education, you have no idea the lengths microsoft will go to push their products. Let me give yo a few examples:
.doc, .xls or .ppt. Because the profs get lots of perks from Microsoft. (hint: they get whatever software they like for, well, um, free)
.NET, etc., all no reg key type.
1) I am finishing a Master's in Ed Technology. We are required to submit our work, etc. in either
2) Everyone in the Master's program, and I think in the credential program, canget Office for $20.
3) In my district, the district technidiots (the same ones who didn't understand how my linux box could get internet access on the school network, and had no idea what TCP/IP was) get thrown all sorts of freebies at the tech conferences. The tech at my school laughed about getting XP Pro, VS
Those are a few examples. I could go on. Microsoft has gotten the Ed. crowd the way Apple did years ago. Worse is the way technology is used in schools. PowerPoint has become the favorite tool of choice for projects. Plus Microsoft gives lots of money to schools, and has VERY long tentacles. They get involved in many ways. You can be sure, this guy is not on Microsoft's payroll directly, but he is certainly the recipient of much Microsoft "benevolence". Teachers are just like everyone else really, just a few freebies, and we're yours.
But here's the biggest rub. The truth is that it takes far more techs to maintain a windows network, then say, a *nix network. Which means the tech department get more jobs, money, etc. And if something breaks, and they fix it, it only reinforces their importance. F***ed up? You bet. And the sad truth is that most school personell are not the best qualified. So, you try to give them linux, which requires more "expertise", they're gonna reject it. Simple really. You'd think that schools would care about cost, security, etc. But they don't.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
The Office of Information Technology at Princeton is divided between thoughtful and clueful people who are an absolute pleasure to work with --- and, regrettably, a few people like those who wrote the above article for Syllabus.
If you look beyond the cheap shots at OS/FS, he's defending PeopleSoft, which makes the CRM-like software that runs the University's bureaucratic systems. The company certainly needs some defending. Case in point: up until last year, Princeton course registration was paper-based. Fill out a scan-tron sheet, have your adviser sign it, and take it to the Registrar. Simple, but students complained about the long walks to remote parts of campus.
Last year, the Registrar finally implemented a new computerized system based on PeopleSoft. The steps for a student to register as follows:
Maybe I'm not subtle enough, but I fail to see how this represents a step forward. It would seem trivial to save the course information on the registration system so the adviser could approve it with a mouse-click at their meeting with the student. But let me guess --- does PeopleSoft not support that? In fairness, PeopleSoft might support it. But if it did, one wonders why the registrar chose a more inefficient solution. Why a three-way paper-shuffle? Is that what PeopleSoft's "aging, over-21 staff" thought was a good idea?
I will not begrudge Mr. Strauss his vitriol --- he reminds me of the apologists for any broken platform. If you're stuck with it, you might as well at least pretend that you like it, and that the competition is junk.
Also -- I can't help but note the omission of a link to the student-run Linux/Unix Users' Group at Princeton. (Consider this a shameless plug.)
Mr. Strauss,
You *are* kidding, right?
Many of those spams to which you compare open source software are now being sent using mass-mailing viruses. Funny thing about viruses is that they usually exploit security flaws - stupid things like buffer overruns - which are by and large eliminated by the peer review process in open source software. (Never mind the poor Windows security model which allows these viruses to do actual damage.)
The writers of open-source software, which you dismiss as being a bunch of children, include organizations like IBM and NASA's JPL. The rogue programmers at NASA must alone be accountable for half the world's virus problems.
I know that when I reboot my FreeBSD webservers (which happens only when the power goes out or I have to vacuum the inside of the computer), the list of credits in the dmesg as it starts up makes me seriously consider how intelligent the choice of open source was, in the face of the legendary reliability, security and standards-compliance of Microsoft IIS.
Not for one second would any reasonable person suggest that student labor is a suitable choice for managing proprietary university systems. But that wouldn't be open source anyway. Nor would there be enough open source interest in developing systems like WebCT (which I haven't personally found to work that well anyway, being all too familiar with administration of WebCT 3.2).
Open source solutions like Linux remain generally unsuitable for the desktop - the very things which make it excel in a server environment are the very things which hobble its mass acceptance and usefulness as a desktop operating system. But that will be fixed before too long.
Where open source currently excels - and has almost since the first newsgroup message where someone said, "You know, I think you could improve your program by..." - is in the implementation of the open standards-based systems which are the very infrastructure of the network.
Open source isn't free. Download a source tarball. Compile it. Use it. Enjoy it. And if you find a feature is broken or missing, your contribution will be to edit the source code and send it back so that other people can share the changes.
And so what if a 14-year-old kid with a cable modem reviews the source, finds a bug or missing feature, and contributes a patch? That patch is still subject to the same peer review process. And it's still public, so that it can be documented by others if not by him.
The most important thing I learned as a student in university is that higher education is not a barometer of intelligence, creativity or aptitude, but a barometer of diligence and funding. Over the years since, I've hired several gifted programmers with ability far eclipsing many of the university graduates I've employed. Mostly they were gifted programmers because that's what they loved to do... kind of like a 14-year-old kid who may have started into C++ when he was 10, has a natural mind for developing algorithms, and is capable of developing efficient software while freshly-minted science degrees are still writing bubble sorts.
Frankly, the ignorance displayed in your article is an embarrassment to you, your professional reputation, and your university.
[signed in real name]
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
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Find a clear defect in a Microsoft product. Document it.
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Call Microsoft (425-882-8080). Try to get it fixed.
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Record how long it took to get it fixed.
Any questions?The author is commiting a grave error in his assessment, stemming from not understanding what he is talking about.
"Free software" as we understand the term nowadays is all about basic freedoms, not about getting a free ride. The freedom to inspect and modify for example, and the freedom to reuse.
The annual IT budget of our clinic is about $30,000. Most of that money goes into "free software" development. We pay software engineers per project or per hour, and we pay decent. But once a project is completed, it belongs to us. And we release it under the GPL.
It makes economical sense: if everybody does the same, developers still get paid well for their work, and everybody can build and extend upon an increasing heap of quality software components.
Everybody wins, only the big coporates depending on cutomer lock in would lose out. I wouldn't shed a tear for them.
temojen wrote:
.... And some of it sells -- sorry -- licenses -- for thousands of dollars. Mr. Strauss's two examples of "good" commercial software, WebCT and Peoplesoft, are exemplary. In my experience, they are some of the worst stuff ever made. I am fairly confident that I could do better than WebCT in a couple of months at a fraction of its cost.
VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org