Open Source - the new evil?

A recent post over at CBR News (that's Comic Book Resources in case you're not into that sort of thing) has more than a couple bloggers amused if not slightly perturbed by the description of the new villain up against Iron Man, Tony Stark.

[Tony Stark] wants to give the world all this amazing technology but he’s nervous when anybody wants to use it... Zeke is a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist

hmm... open source and terrorist in the same sentence? Now I'm paying attention! :)

Writer Matt Fraction goes on:

He has absolutely no loyalty to any sort of law, creed, or credo. He doesn’t want to beat Tony Stark, he wants to make him obsolete. Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop.

Is this some sort of amazingly genius product placement? Maybe the perceived struggle between the "evil corporation" and the somewhat anarchistic open source community has become part of the social fabric.

I am particularly intrigued by the connection Fraction makes between youth and open source technology.

Everybody was older or the same age as Tony and a technologist isn’t going to be fighting the old guys. It’s going to be the new kid with the new idea. Microsoft doesn’t buy up older companies. They’re always buying up the new kids. So I wanted to introduce a kind of new kid aspect.”

You can follow up on this battle between good(?) and evil(?) with the full story.

______________________

Katherine Druckman is webmistress at LinuxJournal.com. You might find her on Twitter or at the Southwest Drupal Summit

Webcast
How to Build an Optimal Hadoop Cluster to Store and Maintain Unlimited Amounts of Data Using Microservers

Realizing the promise of Apache® Hadoop® requires the effective deployment of compute, memory, storage and networking to achieve optimal results. With its flexibility and multitude of options, it is easy to over or under provision the server infrastructure, resulting in poor performance and high TCO. Join us for an in depth, technical discussion with industry experts from leading Hadoop and server companies who will provide insights into the key considerations for designing and deploying an optimal Hadoop cluster.

Learn More

Sponsored by AMD

White Paper
Private PaaS for the Agile Enterprise

If you already use virtualized infrastructure, you are well on your way to leveraging the power of the cloud. Virtualization offers the promise of limitless resources, but how do you manage that scalability when your DevOps team doesn’t scale? In today’s hypercompetitive markets, fast results can make a difference between leading the pack vs. obsolescence. Organizations need more benefits from cloud computing than just raw resources. They need agility, flexibility, convenience, ROI, and control.

Stackato private Platform-as-a-Service technology from ActiveState extends your private cloud infrastructure by creating a private PaaS to provide on-demand availability, flexibility, control, and ultimately, faster time-to-market for your enterprise.

Learn More

Sponsored by ActiveState