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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.
Princeton doesn's have a law school, dumb-ass.
Btw, before I go on to my post: The truth is that it takes far more techs to maintain a windows network, then say, a *nix network. FUD. Fucking FUD. a) you can't prove that b) you've probably never seen a good windows administrator. Heck you've probably never seen a good administrator.
Anyways, the point of the article, which is VERY valid IMO is that panaceas don't work. If you paid attention to the article, he never mentions Windows, nor does he ever mention Linux, nor Apache.
I think he has a very good point, in that free software has it's very interesting niches where it's good: and those are the framework niches. Apache is a framework. Apache is not a web site. (Just as linux is not a desktop).
What does that mean? it means that when a University needs a working useful LAN, sure you can use Linux/Apache/MySQL, just as you can use Windows/IIS/MSSQL, but what you can't use is an aboslutely free website that fits your needs perfectly. There is no Universal Open Source Intranet Site. In fact, it's more like: **every** single site is unique, which means that a website being Open Source will not mean it will miraculously appear out of sourceforge (until sourceforge starts employing an infinite number of monkeys yadi yada...) It most certainly doesn't mean that you can just bypass the most crucial - and most expensive - stages of software development namely: business analysis, architecture, design, and QA - because QA is not just about bugs, as any experienced software developer would know, QA is about making sure that you have nailed your specs.
It's nice to have the website open source, but really all that does is let others see the code in case they need a sample. Nothing more.
That's the illusion that this guy is debunking. Not that Open Source Software is useless.
Maybe he comes from a mainframe background. When I started in 1983, some people still had source mods to IBM's MVS operating system, but they disappeared over the next few years as IBM closed the source and introduced a lot of documented APIs. One reason mainframes are so reliable is that you don't have Joe Sysprog mucking around in the code.
OUR mainframe is reliable because they shut it down for 6 hours every day. I spit on mainframes. Patooie!
Seriously though, I don't think you appreciate the glacial pace at which change occurs at Princeton. I mean, it's Princeton, we've done it like this for hundreds of years! It's the Princeton way. If it was good enough for James Madison and Woodrow Wilson, who are we to begrudge the time honored methods of yore? Now get out your quill and parchment, and sign up for your classes: You're taking Middle Greek, Oratory, European Economyes, and Gentlemanly Etiquette. (you're a Foppish Dandy Studies major).