Characterizing Open-Source Advocates as Cheaters
Submitted
by
Hurderos
Hurderos writes "Michelle Conlin of Business Week makes a very interesting inference in an article entitled Cheating — or Postmodern Learning which she authored in the May 14th, 2007 issue of the
magazine. The article discusses the Duke Business School cheating controversy in the light
of modern technology.
In her summary of the 'average' cheat she describes them as '... on average, 29 years old. The were the cut-and-paste generation, the champions of Linux'. She described them further as working for an average of six years before entering graduate school. At a time '...when their bosses were trumpeting the brave new world of open source, where one's ability to aggregate (or rip off) other people's intellectual property was touted as a crucial competitive advantage'.
As a long time advocate of Open-Source and Linux I was taken back by this. 'Ripping off' one's intellectual property is actually the anti-thesis of the GPL. Rather the GPL is about attributing and acknowledging the contributions of others, something which is in stark contrast to the behavior discussed in this article.
The inference and comparisons are too direct to be accidental. I would hope others in the community would feel it worth their time to join me in asking Business Week and the author for clarification on whether it was their intention to brand supporters of OSS solutions in the enterprise as dishonest or unethical."
In her summary of the 'average' cheat she describes them as '... on average, 29 years old. The were the cut-and-paste generation, the champions of Linux'. She described them further as working for an average of six years before entering graduate school. At a time '...when their bosses were trumpeting the brave new world of open source, where one's ability to aggregate (or rip off) other people's intellectual property was touted as a crucial competitive advantage'.
As a long time advocate of Open-Source and Linux I was taken back by this. 'Ripping off' one's intellectual property is actually the anti-thesis of the GPL. Rather the GPL is about attributing and acknowledging the contributions of others, something which is in stark contrast to the behavior discussed in this article.
The inference and comparisons are too direct to be accidental. I would hope others in the community would feel it worth their time to join me in asking Business Week and the author for clarification on whether it was their intention to brand supporters of OSS solutions in the enterprise as dishonest or unethical."