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 let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is what seems to be driving adoption now. It used to be a bunch of us zealots, fanboys, hackers, admins, the list goes on... It used to be these types making promise after promise about open source software. We knew its capabilities and we'd be damned if we didn't know a perfect fit for OSS when we saw one. It's not that way anymore. Now my manager's coming to me, and my co-workers. More and more often we find him consulting us about equivalent open-source software solutions to proprietary products he's considering purchasing. Thanks to our honesty (no, sir, I'm afraid we don't have anything to compete with Macromedia Flash... yet...), adoption is higher than ever.
I guess what I'm getting at is this:
We've all seen this FUD before. It's old news, it's an old battle. They're bringing it up again. But this time isn't like the last time. It just FEELS like, this time, somethings different. Like they're losing... They're not losing their castle, but the little provinces on the edge of their kingdom. Open source is slowly encroaching on their land, and they know it. This minor FUD is nothing. These guys are pawns. The big counter-attacks we can look forward to are more things along the scale of SCO. Not just misrepresentation of the facts, but real major threats to users of open source software. True attempts to stab at the heart of our force.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Funny)
"Isn't that worth *dying* for?"
Sorry, it just reminded me of a Matrix monologue...
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:4, Insightful)
ECMAScript + SMIL (Score:5, Informative)
ECMAScript [wikipedia.org] is the non-trademark name for standardized JavaScript. SMIL doesn't appear to be supported by Mozilla yet, and I think most of what it can do can be done in ECMAScript + those other technologies (except changeing the volume on sound clips)
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Informative)
And SVG doesn't surpass Flash, it's an entirely different concept. SVG is making vector graphics and animation usable as design tools. In the effect it'll have on the functionality of a lot of web pages, especially when viewed on handhelds and phones, it's definately a revolution, but it's not anything like an improvement on Flash.
Technically, you could turn a SVG file into a
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:5, Funny)
This is the alluring pitch of BSD software. We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but it's BSD 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.
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:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Insightful)
The fundamental concepts in computing and mathematics that drive current software development methodologies were developed decades ago.
It is ignorance (just lack of knowledge, so don't get offended) like this the condemns the field of computer science to continue to repeat the mistakes of the past. Who was that Dijkstra guy? Whatever, I've got a great idea, let's use goto. It's so much more flexible than all that structured programming stuff.
The first Tu
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:4, Funny)
Don't you know????
Real men patch live binaries
None of this source code bullshit for me... I eat, breathe and sleep raw machine code. If there's a security hole in IIS that Microsoft is refusing to fix, I can start up BASIC, do a couple hundred POKE statements, and all's well and good.
Source code is for WHUSSES! (You pansy source-coder.)
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Funny)
Linux and MacOS X are based on 30-year old technology.
Windows XP -is- 30 year old technology with new paint and a bigger engine.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:5, Informative)
- No more institution centric home page
- There should only be one portal. (don't want the students using Yahoo! or
Excite - we want them to use our portal)
- There must exist -complete- customization available to the user. Otherwise, they will continue to use another portal that allows them to do what they want.
- Replaces your desktop
Some of the neat terminology Howard creates: Cameos: Small pieces of data from larger data set and most important, the most important challenge isn't technical, it is requiring all data owners to work together.Congrats Howard, get your closed source, proprietary formats working together. GOD this guy is listed as a futurist! Here's another damn article about portals in 2015 [elibrary.com]. JEEZ give it a break.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Funny)
His brainstorms:
togamatons (wearable computers built into your watch, glasses or clothes)
automatons (built into your car)
refrigermatons (built into your refrigerator door)
bitemematons (Howard, get some fresh air)
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 a
Re:What a change (Score:3, Interesting)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:5, Insightful)
If he said it was useless, ok.
If he said it was worse than proprietary softtware, ok.
If he just said he did't like because he didn't understand it, ok.
But to make such an assumption on the charachter of lots and lots of people AND companies he clearly has no idea are involved with OSS is just plain, well, stupid.
He doesn't even get that IBM and sun back OSS projects to some extent.
What a dimwit!
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 wh
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.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:4, Insightful)
The way I look at free software is basically published research. Sometimes it's just about ready for use right off the FTP site, and sometimes it takes a commercial entity to bring it to the masses. Software is more likely to work stright off the FTP site than, say, quantum mechanics, but it's a similar issue.
Software either holds up to the tests (i.e. netcraft uptimes, business successes, longevity, failure rate, etc) or it doesn't, just like scientific research.
The logic of the guy writing the article is flawed: would he criticize a mad scientist working out of his garage if he ended up curing cancer?
So, if you look at software as research, most of the FUD just disappears. Free software is just the collection of public knowledge about software, and commercial companies can only exist when standing on the shoulders of these giants.
He wants quality control, version control, accountability? Well, there's nothing about free software in contradiction to that idea. Pay commercial companies for what they're good at (or what they are theoretically better at, the reality of quality control in mainstream free software projects is amazing), not whatever proprietary algorithm that they think they're the first to implement. I'm sure commercial companies will eventually be just there to integrate the software with your business processes, more like consultants.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, I am a hacker. I take nothing for granted - not the way software functions, nor the way the laws of physics are applied. I will always question the reality around me and seek to refine the answers that I have found.
Some others want to silence my nature and force me to take their word as the final truth - they are the high-school dropouts of this world, ignorant to every new truth that passes them by. But I can learn from them as well.
There is no negative consequence in my life, only education and experience. I have no regrets. My first day of life and my last are equally valuable to me, no matter how many years seperate them.
Besides, anyone who believes that hours of creativity (and programming is an art, not a science, as far as I'm concerned) can be compensated by a paycheck is deluding themselves. Free software allows a programmer to trade one esoteric thing for another - creativity for community, perseverance for recognition. And the programmer who does so will be fulfilled by it, and can thus tolerate selling other of their works for money.
-Elentar
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Funny)
I think he meant crackers.
No, I think he is crackers.
Well, laugh!
Dan Aris
Bah (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes it can be a bit of a bother to drop in an open source solution but the same also holds true of licensed software. You don't just sqat and shit an oracle installation. You don't just install Windows and have the computers magically doing everything you want them to.
There is no magic bullet that instantly makes the computers do everything you want them to. Not in the Open Source world and not in the commercially licensed software world. Unless you want to make a slashcode site. That really is as easy as "apt-get install slash apache-perl".
Re:Bah (Score:3, Insightful)
In my personal experience, code written for open source projects is written by professional programmers (or by a subset of them who enjoy programming), only not under a deadline, and for kicks not for money. It makes a difference.
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
____________
Bad Software (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a ton of bad closed source software too. For the most part it ends up in the $4.99 bin, if it ever gets into stores at all.
Re:Bad Software (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, in the open source environment, it gets turned into the only video player that we have for months on end...
For the humour-impaired, I'm joking. On a serious note though, the state of affairs with many of the audio programs that I've tried working with aren't particularly rhobust. I can't complain too much, after all they aren't charging me, but I'd even strongly
Re:Bad Software (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I let this particular parody get to me .... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a ton of bad open sourced software out there simply because anyone and everyone can submit code.
For some of the smaller projects that's true. Try submitting a bad kernel patch or something to a larger, managed project though and then hold your breath waiting for it to see life in the next release.
Furthermore, your assertion seems to be that closed source software won't be bad simply "because" programmers from outside the organization can't submit code. I've worked in
Well now... (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft (Score:2)
Is it just me... (Score:5, Insightful)
So stupid, it's not even wrong.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So stupid, it's not even wrong.. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure if it's a flamebait. Maybe it was intended as a flamebait but failed? At least I don't even understand what was the point he was trying to make. Yeah, he doesn't seem to like free software but it was more like random mindless babbling than anything like a good parody or a flamebait.
Now that I look what the article says about the author, "Howard Strauss is the manager of technology strategy", I'm thinking just what the heck is that kind of a job title? Is it a somewhat humorous AI experiment some Princeton students have submitted to Slashdot? Or is this one of the cases where one just has to say "60 lines of LISP can hardly be called an AI"?
Re:So stupid, it's not even wrong..hmmm (Score:3, Funny)
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:So stupid, it's not even wrong.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I went so far as the visit the PeopleSoft web site. Wow! Completely content free gobbledy-gook, but at least I know where to go for a complete "Human Capital Managment" system, whatever the hell that is, if I ever need one.
At WebCT I can get "flexible pedagogical tools."
Yummy! Can I have my electronically delivered pedantic formalism with extra cheese, please?
So, what this guy seems to be saying is that a major university with one of the finest CS departments in the world of whom Brian Frikken' Kernighan is a member isn't qualified to put up the university website, but a bunch of MBAs selling expensive electronic snake oil to tech clueless corporations are?
Is that what that incoherant rant was about?
KFG
yeesh, talk about article -1troll (Score:2)
Re:yeesh, talk about article -1troll (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, you knew that, and chose instead to make a smart-assed reply that makes you look about as mature as the little kid sticking his fingers in his ear and yelling "lalalalalala" when he's criticized.
Re:yeesh, talk about article -1troll (Score:3, Informative)
timothy is an evil man (Score:5, Funny)
Attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Re:Attitude (Score:2)
I should introduce you to some of my friends
Re:Attitude (Score:4, Informative)
Mr. Howard Strauss... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Mr. Howard Strauss... (Score:3, Insightful)
>
Think CIS, and it will simultaneously explain the stupidity and the anti-Free sentiment.
And this rant will probably be rewarded with big donations so he can do more of this kind of "research" for the needy software businesses who feel threatened by FOSS.
Blackboard!!?? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, you didn't. You mean free vending machines for life Blackboard? [slashdot.org]
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Did I mention that I love my regular internet service outages?
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:
- CS and EE departments make punishing use of their computing resources.
- CS and EE departments tend to be Unix-centric, especially Linux and BSD (although HP and Sun do have a strong yet diminishing presence).
- As a result, CS and EE departments tend to have thier own, separate facilities.
- As a result, CS and EE departments cannot take advantages of the enormous economies of scale inheirent in large-scale administration (it should be roughly as easy to admin 1000 machines as 100 or 10000).
- Despite this, CS and EE departments tend to enjoy fairly reliable, trouble free computing.
- In contrast, other departments suffer from poor-performing, unreliable computing.
So, even though they have all of the disadvantages (at least as Mr. Strauss would list them), CS/EE departments get the better end of the computing deal.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, Funny)
CS students (who have gotten past the Freshman level weed-out courses) are likely to me MUCH more tech savvy than, say, a music or statistics major (who mainly want to just run one or two applications and then read email and surf).
Compare that small group of highly technical users, who probably have owned computers for years and years and are embarassed to have to as
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 makin
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Just like proprietary software, open source software varies widely in its quality, and in the maturity of the development process. There are projects (like MySQL, Apache, gcc, Tomcat, Mozilla, etc.) that have astoundingly good regression test suites. Heck, check a change into the Mozilla source code tree and it'll automatically be compiled and regression tested (hundreds of tests) on all supported hardware and OS platforms, with a pretty web page pointing out who broke what when, not to mention a killer defect tracking database. Of course, there are also open source projects that aren't as mature, but then there are proprietary products with bad quality as well.
In my experience the code quality of open source projects is better than proprietary code, because the developers are more afraid of having "the world" see bad code than they are of having "their boss" see bad code. Peer pressure, in this case, is a wonderful thing. Also, engineers on open source projects are typically more responsive than in closed source software product companies, because they can be (no marketing or management barriers) -- only the smallest software companies are as responsive to customers as open source developers, for the same reason.
The 'danger' in using an open source project is that you might use a project without many other users, or have problems that nobody else cares about, in which case you'll have to fix it yourself. You can manage this by making sure that the project is active, and that your application is "typical." If you're company 1M using Apache, there's no risk. If you're company 1 using RandomProject, you're going to run into bumps. Of course, the same is true of proprietary software products, though it's a little harder to find out the real situation, particularly with small companies, so you have to do some digging.
The 'danger' is using a closed source product is that you can't fix the problems yourself, only beg a vendor to fix them (which they often charge professional service fees for!), if they decide to fix the problem at all, on their time schedule. You can manage this by making sure that you pay maintenance, and that you completely rewrite the software license to ensure that the product conforms to the documentation, and that there are response times and financial to give some teeth to make sure that the vendor has the right incentives to make you successful. Never, ever sign a software license as written by any software company -- they're absurdly slanted towards the vendor.
whoah, don't tell anyone.... (Score:2, Redundant)
Reply.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I work on OSS in my spare time, and I don't fit the stereotype... and I don't call every pro-MS a money-scrounging heartless profit-driven capitalist. Just Bill Gates.
Bill and Howard. Yeah... them two.
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?
"Too young", good trick! (Score:2, Funny)
Since Microsoft tries to hire them right out of school, "too young" must be young indeed! I'd rate that article as definitely either a Troll or Flamebait, certainly Overrated.
MIT's response (Score:2)
Does it matter what anyone says about open source? (Score:2, Insightful)
But in the end, won't results speak louder than allegorical assertations?
So, what does he recommend? (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like he's bitching about moving to Windows.
Empty (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Too young to work at Redmond? (Score:5, Insightful)
an object lesson in argumentation (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Yeech (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
since i am a public school teacher (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Who is Linux & Open Source? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [osdn.com], which found Occupation Chart [osdn.com]Hardly what Howard Strauss's article portrays.
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.
Look at the CREN site and Google (Score:3, Informative)
What Mr. Strauss needs... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, some people do get the product for free. That does not mean that some programmers were not paid for their services. Ask any Red Hat or SuSE employee.
The freedom Mr. Strauss does not understand is the freedom to improve given with the software. Not only the right to improve the software, but to improve the community by the giving of ones services and improvement in ones self by learning from previous programmers.
I hope that this is satire, as some of you have posted. Otherwise this serves as a sure sign of failure in our education system. The fact that someone this closed minded, short sighted and greedy is teaching our future generations is a tragedy.
Google is your friend (Score:3, Informative)
source:
http://www.marietta.edu/~mcevents/IMC_2_12_03.pdf
manager of Technology Strategy and Outreach at Princeton University.
A graduate of Drexel University and Carnegie Mellon University
previously employed by the Johnson Space Center of NASA and by Bell Telephone Laboratories
And the scariest one of all:
Strauss has authored several IT courses and is an information technology consultant for many companies and universities.
Yikes!
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.
Reasoning by analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
The simple fact that escapes the Professor and others who don't understand free software, is that there are virtually no manufacturing (duplication) costs for reproducing software. It is therefore possible to design or author software once and reproduce it infinitely especially where the costs of reproduction and distribution are bourne by the copier. Moreover, the previous design and authoring efforts are not wasted but build upon successive itterations.
Instead of explaining this further, let's use an analogy (since the professor likes analogies so much). Instead of horribly flawed analogies comparing open source to Nigerian email fraud let us use a genuinely equivalent analogy.
Imagine if Ford motor company or anyone else could make vehicles for free at the press of a button. That's right, just infinitely replicate any vehicle you come across just by pressing a button and coming back a few minutes later jumping in and driving away.
How would this change the business of vehicle manufacture?
Given this situation let us further imagine that Ford still sold vehicles and moreover that the vast majority of people on the highways drove around in Fords and agreed not to copy any of the vehicles despite their innate ability to be copied. You couldn't even tinker with the engines or change the oil never mind make a whole new copy of a car.
Now given this unresaonable restriction on the way the universe works naturally (in our scenario), wouldn't an enterprising bunch of mechanics team together to design a vehicle that anyone could duplicate freely, and wouldn't others quickly join to improve that vehicle from a primitive wagon into fine vehicles of all descriptions from sportscars to towncars to SUVs that anyone could copy in order to use the highway freely.
Now realize that this IS the nature of software and wonder why Professors still foolishly try to impose the business models and thinking processes suited to traditional manufacturing industries onto a software industry that so naturally matches the above scenario of infinite free replication and incremental creative design.
About Howard and Princeton (Score:5, Informative)
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).
30 years too late (Score:3, Insightful)
But he's 30 years too late. He's predicting the past, and getting that wrong is just stupid.
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.
Princeton, clown college (Simpsons) (Score:5, Funny)
about the buffoon lessons, the four years at clown college.
Cecil: I'll thank you not to refer to Princeton that way.
It's not OS/FS, it's PeopleSoft (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [princeton.edu] Linux/Unix Users' Group at Princeton. (Consider this a shameless plug.)
Am I the only one... (Score:3, Interesting)
Who could blame him? (Score:3, Funny)
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
Closed source software isn't supported (Score:5, Insightful)
-
Find a clear defect in a Microsoft product. Document it.
-
Call Microsoft (425-882-8080). Try to get it fixed.
-
Record how long it took to get it fixed.
Any questions?A+ #1 troll! (Score:3, Insightful)
You can have highly paid programmers at IBM [ibm.com] or Sun [sun.com] build your critical university systems.
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
Suprising (Score:3, Informative)
If I interpreted him correctly, his idea seems to be that the lure of open source software is the lack of licensing cost but this lure is too good to be true. As a result IT managers should not shrink from spending large amounts of money on propritary solutions.
He points out that the actual cost of managing and supporting an open source solution is not free. Thank you Capitan Obvious. Any IT manager worthy of the title would understand this. In fact a proper IT manager would factor in support costs, licensing cost, expected lifespan, risk to operation, expected user base, security and many ofther factors before making a decision on a particular solution. In some instances open source would be chosen, in others not.
To make a case against open source software, Strauss could have chosen some of those factors and provided examples where open source failed. He could have provided hypothetical situations in which the ability to modify source would be dangerous. Instead he chose the "Attack by Bad Analogy". While an analogy can be useful to illuminate a line of reasoning in an argument, it is no replacement for an argument. Indeed, an over-reliance on analogy is generaly a signal that the person lacks a clear understanding of the issue being debated. I would certainly expect better from a publication whose intended audience is involved in higher education.
Strauss goes on to discourage the use of student written software and the idea of user customization. Again, lacking any clear argument, anaolgy is used.
The ability to evaluate software solutions and choose the best fit for the problem is a critical skill for IT managers. A useful article could have explored the particular issues associated with evaluating open-source soultions. Instead a poorly argued rant occupies the space. Hopefully Strauss's article is the exception rather than the rule for the pulication.
support - the real world (Score:4, Informative)
I also tend to get bug fixes faster and mroe timely than I do from commercial software vendors.
Of course YMMV, but personnally I tend to find OSS offers a better quality of support all round. Sure I can't sue anyone, but then in the 10 years or so I've been using OSS I can't think of any reason why I would want to. Now if think of the times I'd like to through a shed load of lawyers at a commercial vendor (no, not necessarily M$)....
Perhaps its because it is a 'hobby' for alot of the OSS people, they take a greater pride in their work and become more emotionally attached to the work and therefore 'care' more about the product.
Persoannly I'd like the man justify his claims
Free as in Freedom, not as in free beer (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
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.
Re:Article in case of /.'ing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Article in case of /.'ing (Score:4, Insightful)
Who exactly is he reaching out to with his blatant insult of many free software developers. I produce quality products during my spare time as a hobby and during the day time I have a professional job. I for one call for Mr. Strauss' immediate resignation. He is clearly short sighted doesn't see the big picture. He is certainly not an individual I would trust to manage my technology outreach program.
E-mail to Mr. Strauss (Score:5, Insightful)
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]
Re:E-mail to Mr. Strauss (Score:4, Insightful)
The letter I wrote to him begins:
First let me say that I hope your rambling diatribe is not indicative of the writing abilities of the average Princeton employee. If it is, then Princeton has indeed fallen as a school.
I just could not resist the dig and, frankly, that is one of the most poorly written articles I have read in a long time.
-sirket
Re:analogies substituted for evidence (Score:5, Funny)
How's that?
Re:Pessimist Professor (Score:3, Informative)