Rip van Winkle has woken up at the Wall Street Journal

Thursday, January 13. 2011

Rip van Winkle has woken up at the Wall Street Journal

Someone called Evgeny Morozov has produced this gem in an article at the Wall Street Journal:

the "open-source" software movement, whose activists tend to be fringe academics and ponytailed computer geeks

Have we really not progressed further than that? I guess one should not expect any sense from the WSJ, especially since its purchase by Rupert Murdoch, but it's really time that these tired, clichéd and stupid characterizations stopped. A fellow at the New America Foundation should know better. And the fact that he can write such ignorant and absurd nonsense casts doubt on his whole thesis.

As the owner of one business and part owner of another, both of which do work based pretty much exclusively on open source software, who left academia nearly twenty years ago and has never worn a pony tail, I'm feeling left out. (OK, I own up to the geek part.)

Just a few miles from here is the headquarters of RedHat. They are a poster child for just how stupid and ignorant this image of open source is. The State of North Carolina has just done a deal with them to make sure they stay here and expand. They are a growing, profitable business that contributes a lot to the local economy.

Open Source is mainstream. Get used to it.

Posted by Andrew Dunstan in PostgreSQL at 17:00 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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Well, you must admit that you're a bit of a crotchety old neckbeard, Andrew… 
 
With all due respect, from a once-pony-tailed geek, of course.

#1 David Wheeler (Homepage) on 2011-01-13 20:35 (Reply)

He didn't mention beards or crotchetyness ... 
 
It's as if I said "the proprietary software business, dominated by college dropouts." 
 
Back when I actually did have long hair, I don't remember too many males wearing pony tails. I think they became more popular later, by which time it was no longer an option for me.

#1.1 Andrew Dunstan on 2011-01-13 22:49 (Reply)

If the first sentence where it, this article would be flaky. But then I ran across this gem: 
 
"The global triumph of American technology has been predicated on the implicit separation between the business interests of Silicon Valley and the political interests of Washington" 
 
By the time I got to the end I got the feeling the author was arguing against himself. Sort of lowers my opinion of Stanford.

#2 Adrian Klaver on 2011-01-14 01:19 (Reply)

You're (in my opinion) being too kind: 
 
A fellow at the New America Foundation should know better. And the fact that he can write such ignorant and absurd nonsense casts doubt on his whole thesis. 
 
 
This description assumes incompetence, rather than active duplicity. I take the latter view. It is Murdoch, after all.

#3 Robert Young (Homepage) on 2011-01-14 04:37 (Reply)

Hm, the 'ponytailed' perception is one thing, but there are far more important misconceptions presented in the paper, especially when it comes to open source. 
 
For example the paragraph starting with "Open-source software can allay some of these security concerns." He basically says that open source is not a silver bullet (ok, we all know that's true) but then he demonstrates this on e-mail (which is a protocol vulnerability and we all know you should encrypt your e-mail to fix that), Gmail/Skype/RIM (which are all proprietary, not open source) and WikiLeaks (which is related to whistle-blowing, not open source). 
 
A particularly funny statement is "Though such systems are more democratic than closed ones, they are also easier to manipulate, especially for governments with vast resources at their command." as the private businesses are much easier to manipulate than open source projects. The funny thing the ease of manipulation is demonstrated on a Sprint Nextel case, mentioned in the article.

#4 Tomas Vondra (Homepage) on 2011-01-14 14:17 (Reply)

Note the word "activist". I think this is a fair generalisation.

#5 Adrian on 2011-01-14 18:14 (Reply)

Nonsense. This is just a silly way of belittling Open Source. Bob Young has been much more of a practical open source activist than all the babbling ponytailed fanboys you can name.

#5.1 Andrew Dunstan on 2011-01-14 18:33 (Reply)

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