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

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

[randyest]

Worse, that -1 Flamebait drivel included this nonsense:

This is the alluring pitch of open source software. We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but it's FREE 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.

Funny, I've seen varying levels of QC, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support offerings from both open source and commercial software, with an overall slight lead by open source. But that's not the most annoying or perplexing part.

That award goes to "[modifying the source code] was discredited decades ago". WTF? How, by whom, and most importantly why was "modifying source code" discredited? I mean, the whole article is full of completely unsubstantiated nonsense and mudslinging, but this little comment grabbed my attention.

Does anyone know what he's talking about? Some decades-old study that somehow could be interpreted as "discrediting" souce-code mods, perhaps? I don't even have a guess.

Of course, taken to the extreme, that silly idea would mean no program would ever get new features or bug fixes except by being completely re-written from scratch, which would no doubt defeat the purpose in most cases.

What a maroon.

Ditto

[DaveAtFraud]

I work on OSS in my free time and I work at the company with a Linux hosted commercial product. So, lets see how many ways I don't fit this bozo's stereotypical OSS contributor:

> a smattering of teenagers too young to work at Redmond,

Nope. I hit the big 50 in a couple of years. Still have a punch card hanging in my office as a reminder of "the old days".

> hackers,

No again. The company I work for makes network security software.

> virus creators,

Nope. See above.

> and a menagerie of others with whom you will feel great pride in entrusting your IT infrastructure.

Gee, the Air Force let me write software to target ICBMs and build radar systems, the Navy let me build radar system, for the Army it was logistics and air defense command and control software, I've also written software for maintaining civilian airliners and I now work for a company that makes really good money selling the network monitoring software I help create. Menagerie is a funny word to use to describe a group of people with this kind of credentials, but, maybe he was at a loss for words.

Are we sure Laura DiDio didn't just take on another pseudonym?

A View from Campus

[owsla]

Since the "at" link in the story is to a former version of my homepage (~ferguson is my dad), I think I can comment on this.

I don't know WHERE this guy is coming from, unless its satire, in which case, it is poorly executed. Linux is quite prevalent on campus. In fact, OIT (central campus network folks) had to drop support for the public Irix cluster because of support costs, while the public Linux and Solaris clusters are chugging along just fine.

Yes, students have been using it on campus forever, but the scientists and engineers like it quite a bit too. A 1999 report by a Faculty Sub-Committee writes, "Linux is emerging as a widely-used version of Unix. At this time there are over 600 Linux systems registered at Princeton, and the number is growing rapidly. One of the advantages of Linux is that it makes it possible to take advantage of the economies of Intel-based computing and a full-featured operating system with a complete set of high quality software tools available gratis. We recommend that consideration be given to expanding the university DeSC program to include the Linux operating system as an option." [DeSC is the Desktop Systems Council, which oversees official university desktop computers.] So Slashdot crowd, remember who makes the real decisions at a private university: the tenured faculty, end of story. (NB, how many slashdot stores have been posted about Prof. Felton and his group? They do plenty of work with OSS.)

OIT has included Linux-specific information for a couple years now in its knowledgebase, complete with setup information, network configuration & printing, mounting the campus samba servers, backing up to the central Tivoli servers, etc. etc. They've also held seminars touting the benefits of OSS for departments; I know, because I've been to them.

So Linux isn't in trouble at Princeton. Guess this oddball found a pulpit from which to buck the herd.

Letter from a Princeton student

[kbmccarty]

Amazing, something that actually made me de-lurk on Slashdot...

Here is my letter to this guy:

From: Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@nospam.Princeton.EDU>
To: howard@princeton.edu
Subject: Your article in Syllabus (perspective from a Princeton graduate student)

Sir:

I am a graduate student in the Princeton University Physics Department. I came across your article regarding open source software on Syllabus Magazine's web site, in which you do a grave disservice to Princeton University's reputation of technical excellence. Allow me to elaborate.

You say, with a tad of sarcasm:

"These folks [open source software developers] are some of the same great people who are supposed to be working for you anyway, plus 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."

I am interested, then, in how you feel about the Princeton University web servers at www.princeton.edu running Apache, the most well-known open source web server. Apparently [1], Apache has more than 2/3 of the web server market share on the Internet, so someone must trust these people. Of course, the fact that source code is available for open source projects may have something to do with this trust. By the way, how many open source viruses have you seen? (Microsoft Word macros don't count.)

[1] http://www.netcraft.com/

You say:

"We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but it's FREE 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."

Really? Who discredited the ability to modify source code? Did I miss a Congressional report or something? I apologize for calling you dead wrong, but in fact the Linux kernel [2], one of the most successful open source projects in existence, has been continually updated and improved since its first release in 1991, all by people with an interest in changing source code. These "dangerous" modifications have strangely made Linux and its BSD Unix cousins more stable than any release of Windows. The open source software development process is self-regulating: stable, good software survives, while low-quality efforts are ignored and drop from the face of the Internet. It is too bad that mediocre commercial software does not do the same, since it is too well-supported by people who will not consider using anything they are not required to pay for.

[2] http://www.kernel.org/

You say:

"We either pay commercial software developers, pay to build it ourselves, or pay the even higher price to manage and maintain FREE open source software."

I don't suppose you are aware of the existence of companies who provide support for open source software. Believe it or not, it is possible to buy a support contract from most major Linux distributors, e.g., [3]. It is even possible to ask (politely) for FREE support on open source message boards, such as [4], where you will usually get far more helpful responses than the standard Microsoft "Have you tried rebooting? Reinstalling?".

[3] http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/
[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/

You say:

"Another way to get free software is to have students develop our critical systems," and "You can also get free software developed by having your users develop it for you."

These are ridiculous straw man arguments. No sane system administrator would tell his/her students or users to develop their own softwa

Clueless managers

[hherb]

I quote: "We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but it's FREE 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."

Doesn't really require a comment. Discredits the author, just shows that he hasn't got a clue. This would not matter, would this person not be in the position he is. That level of incompetence is shocking.

I am a medical doctor with a past history as software engineer. I run a paperless clinic (Dorrigo Medical Centre). There may be situations where patient's lifes depend on what our software does or doesn't do, not just the flawless running of a university department. To us and our patients, robustness and reliability of software is crucial.

Yet we use free software to this purpose, almost to exclusion. Why? Trust. Peer review. Accountability. All issues not covered by shrink wrap software with general disclaimers, where the end user is disempowered to the degree of a mere slave.

We never would pur our patients at risk by using software of a company with such abysmal reputation regarding stability, reliability and security such as Microsoft. We don't trust free software either right our of the box for that matter - but here at least we can investigate and verify, or pay competent people to do it for us.

Shame on this man and his unsubstantiated statements. Reality check strongly recommended (like what software is keeping the Internet alive and working, and what software is running some of the worlds most powerful and expensive computers liek Blue Gene)

Dr Horst Herb, MD
Principal, Dorrigo Medical Centre, Australia
Management Committee Member, General Practice Computing Group