Irish Linux Users Group Refutes Claims made on Morning Ireland about

mneylon

Thought this would be of interest to some people, but wasn't sure where it should go:
Dublin, Ireland, 2nd February 2004 .

ILUG (Irish Linux User Group), strongly refutes the claims made by
Mr. William Campbell on RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland, in relation to
the "MyDoom" virus currently spreading across the internet and that the
virus can be attributed to the Linux/Open Source community.

Although not directly affected by the "MyDoom" virus, ILUG and the
Linux/Open Source community joins in the condemnation of this and all
other computer worms and viruses as being a violation of the computer
user's right to use their computer and serve only to further inhibit
free, open information & knowledge exchange. We do however feel that
the RTE report lacked objectivity and represented our community in a
misleading light.

A number of statements were made by Mr William Campbell of Bua Training,
which grossly misrepresented the Linux & Open Source Community in
Ireland.

Mr Campbell stated he suspected the open source community of developing
and deploying this software. We find this statement offensive,
irresponsible and made without any reasonable thought or evidence to
suggest any Open Source Software community involvement.

Furthermore, the suggestions that Linux, OpenOffice.org and Star Office
are companies are simply wrong. Linux is a free operating system
developed
by many people and companies world wide in the spirit of cooperation,
with no one individual owning the rights to the software. This is also
true for OpenOffice.org while Star Office is a product of Sun
Microsystems. Linux & Open Source Software is in use successfully by
many Irish Companies, including RTE.

SPAM and Viruses represent serious issues for Linux and the Open Source
Community, and as such the Open Source Community has spent many man
years developing ways to prevent spam and viruses from affecting
computer users. SPAMASSASSIN which helps combat junk email was created
and is maintained by Irish Open Source Developers. SPAMASSASSIN and
other Open Source Software Community products such as Clam Anti Virus
can detect and safely remove the "MyDoom" virus before it can reach
users of vulnerable commercial operating systems

Linux & Open Source Software companies employ many Irish people and
enjoy continued success both nationally and on the global arena and
welcome fair and level competition with larger commercial operating
system vendors.

Open Source Software is written and subsequently licensed under what is
known as an Open Source Licence. This software has been placed under
that licence voluntarily by the author. The author may be a company or
an individual who may or may not receive any payment for the work, but
in fact a lot of work is done by employees within commercial companies
(e.g. IBM, Sun, HP and SCO). This is then provided to members of the
general public free of charge as a viable alternative to other
commercial software.

ILUG respectfully requests that Mr. Campbell publicly clarify his
statements made in relation to the Linux and the Open Source Software
community in Ireland. Additionally, we request that RTE allow us to
refute Mr. Campbell's statements publicly so as to help undo some of the
damage we feel may have been caused to our organisation.


About ILUG

The Irish Linux Users Group (ILUG) was set up in 1997 to promote
awareness of the Linux operating system within Ireland. The ILUG also
acts as a focal point both for developers wishing to contribute to the
Open Source Software movement and for users of all levels seeking to
solve their individual technical issues. Much of the everyday
interaction revolves around our free mailing lists. Additionally our web
site contains a lot of valuable information for everyone including a
list of hardware and software vendors who deal with Linux, an area for
beginners, a library containing books and software CDs for loan, and a
downloads area where software written by members of the ILUG is freely
available. Membership of the ILUG is free and is open to anyone. For
more information about ILUG and Linux in Ireland, please visit
www.linux.ie

dahamsta

Fair dues to ILUG for responding to this in such short order. One thing though...

Although not directly affected by the "MyDoom" virus

My hat. My Linux mail server is being hammered by MyDoom. Filtering the mails (with open source software) lightens my workload, but it's still using my valuable resources. (93 instances of MyDoom in the last 12 hours, 30-odd instances of assorted other junk.)

adam

ronanp

Think the key word there was directly! While your mail server obviously had an extra traffic burden, its not infected or anything.

dahamsta

Still a direct affect.

Campbell's reaction is typical, as is ILUG's.

adam

scojones

G'Wan the ILUG! School that muppet.

electrofelix

Mr Campbell stated he suspected the open source community of developing
and deploying this software. We find this statement offensive,
irresponsible and made without any reasonable thought or evidence to
suggest any Open Source Software community involvement.

To be honest the text above isn't really accurate. He didn't state it but allowed the implication to exist and thus allowed the impression that it was OpenSource developers behind and failed to correct this in his following statements. But he didn't state that OSS was behind this.

Typedef

Felix :


It's all about perception. Joe-Soap technically impoverished person, doesn't really know the difference, nor care enough to extrapilate past the inferences presented in a quasi-sensationalist way. You get films like "Hackers" and "Wargames" giving 'ordinary' people the impression that nerds (aka Linux users) aka anybody even mildy technical, ferments a latent desire to crash oil-tankers or hack the Pentagon's security net and start a Nuclear war and that such things are even realistically possible, to anybody with a modem and a dos prompt.

Such ideas are popular in the media and idots like Mr Campbell only predicate such stupid notions.

From what I can tell, Mr Campbell, probably isn't really that technically proficient 'anyway', yet after making such, Hacker=Open Source=Virus Writer correlations to a public, who believe films like "Wargames" are true, he goes on, to shout defamation, when members of the Open Source community rightly point out, that he is, by and large talking bollox.

electrofelix

Not disagreeing but we (ILUG, I am a member) should have phased that section a little be better. Implied would have been a better choice of word than stated, isn't really a whole lot of difference but since a lot of our discussions take place using an Internet mailing list it means our personal views are out in the public domain and can be used against us.

theciscokid

did you hear that stuttering git calling it open system software

wheres the trinoo

Capt'n Midnight

I love the way they are trying to put a "linux community" spin on viruses.

Just exactly what percentage of all viruses were written by people from the "windows community" ?


RANT
Poor M$ , CONTINUING to add macro functionality to new file types, despite the BILLIONS of $'s of damage caused by this on each of many occasions in the past. - Makes the quarter of a million reward seem trivial. - The point being that scripting a virus that exploits known problems in windows doesn't seem to be terribly difficult judging by the frequency by which they appear (look at number of them in lists on anti-virus vendors pages.) And it's taken about three months to release an IE patch for certain holes - and this wouldn't be the second or third patch that was supposed to fix that type of exploit..

It taken for granted in some circles that much commerical software/firmware in devices have back doors for use by the vendor or goverment agency use. (look up the use viruses in the Gulf Wars).
If they exist and could be exploited then.....

Just imagine something that combines the worst of slammer and msblaster with a destrutive payload.

/RANT

Cabaal

Originally posted by theciscokid
did you hear that stuttering git calling it open system software

He reffered to Open Source Software as Open System Software?
what a friggin muppet

L1011

heh, should someone ever make a virus that hammers Palm's servers will I have to come out with a statement refuting its the work of the BeOS users of the world?

Though I have to admit my automatic assumption was when I saw who it was going after that it was a group of highly disgruntled Linux users...

flamegrill

Guys and Gals, I'm going to put a halt on this. There is no point in boards.ie getting dragged into a legal argument aswell as linux.ie.

If/when it blows over, perhaps we can discuss it in a less direct manner.

Thanks.