Free Software As Nigerian Scam 685
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.
I smell astroturf (Score:2, Interesting)
heh heh heh... (Score:4, Interesting)
This should in now way be construed as an entre for Eric (/Bruce/Linus/Richard) to launch a salvo. Really,
Not to mention where else should you embrace open source but in academia.
And here's the punchline, from netcraft:
The site www.princeton.edu is running Apache/1.3.4 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.1.8 SSLeay/0.9.0b on Solaris.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
My response to howard@princeton.edu (Score:5, Interesting)
1) blatant factual inaccuracies:
> 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.
I don't know of a single open-source / free software project that doesn't use version control. In fact, what might easily be the
most popular version control system in the world, CVS, is itself
an open source project.
Coding Standards? True, not every open-source project has written guidelines for that. However, many do ( The Jakarta sub-project
group at the ASF comes to mind, as does the Mozilla project) and
all are subject to the most rigorous coding standard of all... review and inspection by an unlimited number of peers, at any time of day or night, 24 x 7, 365 days a year. Let a snippet of bad code get checked into the repository (see above) for a large open source project with
numerous active committers, and see how long it takes for it to get rolled-back, and the author mercilessly flamed.
Quality Control? Maybe you've heard the expression "all bugs are shallow, given enough eyeballs?" Open Source by it's very nature has
the ultimate form of quality control... and unlike closed source
proprietary software, the end user generally has relatively easy
access to the engineers working on the code, to report defects,
whether it be via Bugzilla, Sourceforge, e-mail, newsgroups or
what have you.
Support? JBoss Corp. provides support for the JBoss application server,
Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake and many others provide supported distributions of Linux, and Mozilla.org provides support for Mozilla. And that's just
paid support I'm referring to. Never mind the aforementioned channels of e-mail, newsgroups, forums, etc., for interacting directly with the authors (and fellow users) of the code.
As for modifying code being dangerous... that's just ignorant. Cutting towards yourself with a sharp knife is dangerous... crossing a busy highway without looking is dangerous... modifying source code is about as NON dangerous an activity as you could dream up.
2) unwarranted and inaccurate personal attacks
> These folks 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.
Wow, you just managed to insult the entire open source community in one
drop of the hat... a community which happens to include many professional software engineers, working for respected firms such as IBM, Red Hat, SGI, Novell, Mandrakesoft, Sun Microsystems, etc.
I suppose you believe Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox to be "others with whom you will feel great pride in entrusting your IT infrastructure," eh?
Oh, and you make look around the Princeton campus sometime... I'm pretty sure you'll find quite a number of members of the open source community there, both students and faculty / staff members.
3) red herrings and unrelated rambling galore...
no quote necessary... this bullet basically summarizes your entire article.
In short, you sir, are either a flaming idiot, or the first Slashdot troll to get hired by Princeton and allowed to publish obvious flamebait in Syllabus. If this was an intentional troll, I must say, it was a masterful one. If you actually meant any of that drivel however, I would suggest you leave the IT industry and take up something you are competent at.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:5, Interesting)
But free software is the domain of hackers - hackers came up with the concept in the first place. Incidentally, wasn't there a survey a while back showing that most hackers contributing to free software are professionals in their 40s? While they are certainly tinkerers, they are hardly students.
Ditto (Score:5, Interesting)
> 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?
Clueless about Open Source SW development (Score:2, Interesting)
Where did Emacs originate? Vi? Sendmail? Big chunks of Unix? Programmers many at universities "scratching an itch"
This includes Princeton, btw. I used to use one of their editors.
Linux at Princeton (Score:2, Interesting)
I work in the Engineering Quadrangle at Princeton. Linux is around, sometimes covertly,
the happy replacement for all those fubared Win2000 installs the CIT techs punch out. But then again, check out systems like hats.princeton.edu (running RedHat) that run pricey MatLab and Mathematica on an Nigerian scam money funded OS. In your a^Hear Mr. Strauss.
Oh, and as a LUG/IP member, I can say that we aren't affliated with Princeton University, just with the Central NJ area and that the meetings used to be in a bar just off campus.
Howards Linux connection (Score:2, Interesting)
Nothing hampers a programmer's creativity as much as a compiler.
A View from Campus (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [princeton.edu] 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.
MOD PARENT UP!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
good thing im here to find this link [google.ca]
"Join this free, live audiocast during which Paul Hill of MIT and
David Bodnar of the University of Colorado, Boulder, will be
interviewed about the state of their institution's planning and
deployment of Windows 2000. Richard Jones will be guest
co-hosting along with regular Technology Anchor, Howard Strauss
Thursday, November 30 at 4 pm Eastern Time
Sponsored by Microsoft..."
I knew it had to boil down to microsoft.
oh and another [google.ca]
"Our Sponsor for this Event
Microsoft is committed to helping colleges and universities build 21st Century Campuses in the Connected Learning Community by continuing to provide them with rich technology tools. Some Microsoft Web links of potential interest include:"
can you say vested interest?
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm with you though, I can't wait for the revolution that will be SVG and its kin. A lot of people think it only competes with Flash... But those are the people that haven't read the spec, I'm assuming you have so you must know that what the W3C has been cooking up FAR surpasses Flash. =)
Re:So stupid, it's not even wrong.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Interesting)
In any case, I sent an email to Princeton's OIT with some of the comments posted here and maybe someone will take some notice. I'll be sure to post any reply I might possibly get
____________
I must say that I was really quite disappointed to learn that OIT employes people as closed minded as Howard Strauss. I would highly recommend reading his article, "The FREE, 0% APR, Better Sex, No Effort Diet" (http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=8460). Although I am not one who says that any for-profit closed-source software is a bad solution, I do believe that OIT could benefit greatly from involving people who look at all possible software solutions available, and not just those from major corporations.
The attitude portrayed by Mr. Strauss towards students is also stunningly demeaning and insulting.
I do hope that Mr. Strauss' views do not reflect the overall attitude at OIT and that some action be taken to inform him of the quality of certain open source solutions and this universities students. I believe the fact that two thirds of the internet's web servers are run on open source software speaks for itself.
Thank you for your time,
Sad, but true. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
See link mentioned above for a small taste of the idiocy you'll encounter, if you've not already had a taste.
The real scam artist here is Howard, who has managed to hold down this job at Princeton, of all places. To have a managerial position, apparently all one needs is the ability to write jargon-laden papers and know how to turn one's nose up at undergrads. Thinking is optional. Insight is unnecessary. Knowledge of the subject matter is most likely beyond a manager's grasp, even if the manager is supposedly a learned man. Rather than research the subject matter, go with one's gut, write about whatever one thinks is true.
Move along; nothing to see here.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:4, Interesting)
It goes much further than that. The whole freaking Internet is the domain of hackers. It was created by hackers, for hackers... (heh that's probably why there's so much debate about going to IPv6)
I wonder if he understands that the majority of the software he uses has at least a little part that has been borrowed from the realm of hackers. Look at Kerberos, GZip, TCP/IP, the list goes on and on.
It's funny that you mention that most hackers are professionals in their 40's. Back when hacking was born (right about the time when computers came about), yes, they all worked at the companies that could afford computational equipment. After that, the hackers started coming from places other than Xerox, mainly UC-Berkley and MIT. I would say that even the phD's there are still students, they still attack research and problem-solving like a student would. It's a funny thing, but I'd say that as long as you are paying or paid by a University, you should be considered a "student."
If my last conjecture is true, then this article is a severe case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
The above posting is somewhat more insightful that it appears at first glance. Consider this: I have yet to attend or visit an institution where the CS/EE departments did not have their own computing services departments.
I can quite specifically point to CRL [uiuc.edu] at UIUC [uiuc.edu] and CTS [wustl.edu] at Wash U [wustl.edu]. Both are "wholly owned subsidiaries" of their respective CS departments (although CTS provides support for other deparments...for a price). And both are far more competant than any of the other IT staffs at their institutions.
Now, why is this interesting? Think--CS and EE departments make much heavier use of Unix (especially free Unix) than other departments. Their respective IT departments manage to keep these abused and Unix-heavy infrastructures up and running far more effectively with far less fuss than the underutilized and MS-heavy infrastructures of other departments [wustl.edu] (actually, to be fair, the Olin B-School does have a better-than-average IT support staff. Nowhere near as good as CRL or CTS, but better than average. Something to do with hiring a bunch of employees with a 25% turnover rate).
Let's summarize the interesting facts:
If this is computing with no QC, no support, and no accountability, someone needs to sue those bastards pushing 6-sigma for screwing everybody else over.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, ours does. In fact, we test every piece of code that goes to a customer on a dozen different hardware pieces, we have a unit of each model of printer that we've okayed for use (some 30 or 40 units) and for big releases we deal with several large beta customers before release.
And our company only employs 20 people. Every minute spent testing is a minute we could be making a new product...but supporting the old stuff is what makes us so popular with the customers we have, and it's why they pay support costs every year and buy our new stuff when it comes out.
In fact, now that I think about it, every company I've worked with since I started my professional career had a very serious and very adept quality team on our side. Most of the time they were structured in such a way that QA was working actively AGAINST the release of any software...playing a sort of programmatic Spy vs. Spy with the developers. The result is stronger software faster, which contributes to the bottom line.
I *LIKE* open source, but the existing mechanisms for testing are really terrible, even if the bug repair response can be great. And since there's no accountability, there's little enforcement for responsibility...we KNOW that the developers of applciation X will probably fix that big hole in the security layer, but there's always the chance that they'll say "screw it, we want to work on the new stuff, fix it yourself." This is not the news you want to hear when a bug is holding up your business...that you will either have to hire an expensive programmer who knows the code, or a cheap programmer who will take weeks to get it done.
A lot of companies aren't willing to take the chance. To them, the security of having a responsible company behind their software is worth the money "wasted" by not going with an OSS project.
Not that this guy isn't a complete prick. Just playing Devil's Advocate, and reminding ya'll that like all drugs, OSS isn't right for everyone. There are side effects.
Am I the only one... (Score:3, Interesting)
A couple of points of Howard Strauss irony (Score:2, Interesting)
His portals presentation [princeton.edu]is a couple of years old and seriously dates itself with the following:
Loading the page with Safari gives me this: Slide #5: 1) Nasser got the boot by Bill Ford for taking his eye off the auto business
2) Wine.com merged with wineshopper.com which then folded, and the domain & other assets were purchased by eVineyard which continues to use the wine.com address
3) Digiscents isn't around, either, having folded the following year
If nothing else, he's consistent at quoting duds.
Letter from a Princeton student (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazing, something that actually made me de-lurk on Slashdot...
Here is my letter to this guy:
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 [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/ [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/ [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/ [redhat.com]
[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/ [debian.org]
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
Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
This makes a lot of sense, though, seeing as U of C's curriculum is a lot more theory based than most. A CS major's preliminary course is taught in Scheme. We use strange things like ML. Heck, the CS building is connected to the math building.
NSIT, like Princeton, also leaves something to be desired. Like the 2 or 3 major email malfunctions that occur every year.
Of course, the CS department's own machines do always seem to be running smoothly...
--Stephen
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Interesting)
I especially liked this quote
I think I could take that as a qualified endorsement of OSS. I mean, who's in more control of what shows up on my screen when I use OSS?...I control the horizontal, I control the vertical, I control the applications, right down to the nuts and bolts if I want....
...Hypocrit....I think he's bucking for a job at MS as a backup for when Princeton "lets him go."
Clueless managers (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Howard Strauss as Court Jester (Score:3, Interesting)
I read Howard Strauss' abovementioned article.
Quite apart from the intended insult of the comparison to the Nigerian scamsters, I found his thread quite hard to follow. I guess if he had been Theseus, he would've wound up in the Minotaur's stomach after all.
"Too sophisticated to believe" - precisely what has this got to do with anything, let alone the question at hand? Then we get on to the ridiculous, skipping the sublime with consumate ease ...
"You can get complex systems at absolutely NO COST!" Yes, for a start they enable you to publish Syllabus, using the HTTP transport protocol and the HTML markup language, running on the TCP/IP internetwork connection suite.
"Why buy expensive software or spend millions to develop it yourself?" In relation to the Internet - let's see, I have within my grubby little hands, a book called "The Open Book", which you may or may not have read, written by Marshall T Rose, in which he mentions the Open Systems Interconnect internetworking suite - so far behind it's now been officially abandoned except for highly specialized applications such as the Aeronautical Telecommunication Network. There's nothing so cheap as a product that never gets developed.
"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 it anyway." Where to start? Has the estimable Howard Strauss ever read "The Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick Brooks? Of IBM's Operating System/360 fame? That does tend to cast doubts on the value of a lot of so-called "project planning". Strangely enough, much of the problems Microsoft has had with Windows over the last few years has been with "quality control" - I don't call soBig's world-wide success a proof that Microsoft has any idea what quality is, let alone how to develop for it. Ditto "coding standards" - and "accountability" - have you managed to get from Microsoft a statement of accountability for its criminal negligence in releasing software that allows such grotesque default breaches of privacy and personal security as Windows? "Version control"? The estimable Howard Strauss is pulling my leg. Perhaps he can tell me what the letters cvs and rcs mean - besides being TLAs? "Support"? Amazing - I bought MS DOS 5.0 when it came out - but Microsoft was never particularly interested in supporting me.
"something that is extremely dangerous to do," for ignorami. I expect every prof and his dog to back me up on this - mind you, I also expect every prof and his dog to back me up when I also say that doing such dangerous things is one way to learn, and extremely fast.
"was discredited decades ago," - by whom, where at, and in relation to what? I suppose that also refers to the TCP/IP suite, the which discredited software you yourself are happily running a magazine site on? And in relation to which, might I add, Microsoft has been happily selling software that is based heavily on said TCP/IP source code - you are at liberty to inform them that half their product lineup has been discredited.
"Another way to get free software is to have students develop our critical systems." Ask the DoD about TCP/IP and the University of California at Berkeley. Even better still, ask Bill Joy, late of Sun Microsystems, about the UoC at Berkeley.
"You can also get free software developed by having your users develop it for you. Really, users are no dummies ..." - only if you don't treat them as
dummies. The estimable Howard Strauss gets funnier and funnier all the time.
Do you think Apple would've got so far along with its Macintosh - if it
hadn't had Hypercard? Here was a nice little utility - users with no
background in programming of cou
He's a manager that's been cut out of the loop (Score:4, Interesting)
Those that cannot do, manage. Those than cannot manage in the face of change, complain. Ignore him.
Re:What a change (Score:3, Interesting)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a matter of taste, I suppose. But rather than "kinda uplifting and well put", I would've chosen "cloying".
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps, but you still can't exchange Whuffie for a Whopper and fries.
Of course, the real conpensation for writing free software is having the free software once you've written it.
I maintain a fairly modest, but powerful command-line file searching utility for Windows that I've developed over about 7 years. It has more options than ls and grep combined (well almost), each of which is usually traceable to something I wanted or needed at a particular time. It is what it is, because it does something I want and works the way it is.
I could attempt to sell it for $20 like 98% of the people who have written some stupid, near-useless VB utility in their lives have done, but what's the point? It's on SourceForge (look for RickLib, if you care). I wrote it for me, if someone paid me for it, I'd have to support it (and fix the occasional bug that still shows up). If someone can and wants to use it, let 'em.
Ultimately, I did it for me, the way I want, and I use it on a daily, even hourly basis, for all kinds of things.
The big OSS more ambitious projects ultimately are the same thing, people are writing software that they want to have and use. They are sharing it because that way others can help and gain from their work. It's very lower-case 'c' communist, but then again so was the early Christian church.
Pretty radical stuff.
Hacker Vs Script-kiddie Vs Student (Score:3, Interesting)
And students? Why not pick up linux if you're a student. Yes, no shiat it saves money over picking up a legit copy of XP Pro, and yes, you can learn/do a lot more with it in many scenarios.
Really, you could pretty much draw a correlation between higher functionality and hackers in general, except that many people think hacker=virus=blackhat nowadays.
Wouldn't even Bill G have been considered something of a hacker back in the day? Granted with MS he's more like Darth Vader nowadays, but he could have had promise at one point.