Dailydave mailing list archives

Re: ADTI


From: security curmudgeon <jericho () attrition org>
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 15:18:56 -0500 (EST)


: While I am ranting about this sort of bull****, I'd like to ask people
: on this list who have dabbled in OS development wether they would
: subscribe the the idea that ADTI is putting out in this article
:
: http://www.adti.net/samizdat/brown.reply.june.04.html

From the article:

  Linux is Inherently Unstable

  The disturbing reality is that the hybrid source model depends heavily
  upon sponging talent from U.S. corporations and/or U.S. proprietary
  software. Much of this questionable borrowing is a) not in the best
  interest U.S. corporations b) not in the best interest of IT workers in
  America c) at a serious expense to the investment community, an entity
  betting on the success of intellectual property in the marketplace.


: And ADTI is trying to explicitly confuse the readers that read their
: studies in 2004: The first n incarnations of Linux were not a "real" OS
: yet, but were filed under "toy for programmers" in almost all mailboxes
: I was on at the time. Even as late as 2000, there were portions of the
: Linux kernel with comments like "/* Don't know why this works, just DONT
: change it! */".

This is ADTI. This should be read with the same grain of salt as any 75
dollar 'news' piece that hits PRNewswire. Remember, Microsoft is one of
ADTI's backers, and their consistant anti-open source articles and
"research" are not coincidence.

http://www.attrition.org/security/rant/microsoft_pr_assault.html

[..]

As McCarthy points out, Microsoft is not new to paying analysts for
favorable reports. In the early months of 2002, a little known think tank
named Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (ADTI) released a report titled
Opening the Open Source Debate. This lead to an ADTI press release making
the grave claim Open Source Software May Offer Target for Terrorists and
threw around terms such as "terrorists" and "national security". In an
article exposing this report, Richard Forno goes on to say "Contrary to
the promise of the press release, the actual document spoke very little
about the role of open source software in the fight against terrorism.
However, it did do a magnificent job as a thirty-three page marketing
brochure extolling the business value of closed-source, proprietary
software." Shortly after ADTI's paper was released, security professionals
world wide questioned why a think tank that had never published a paper on
such a topic suddenly came forth with this "research". Michelle Delio of
Wired dug into the relationship between ADTI and Microsoft and found "..
that Microsoft provides funding to the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution."

[..]

Read the following two articles as reference:
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/89
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,52973,00.html


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