Re: [Fsfe-uk] FAST bullying tactics in schools

[adam]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 04:31:10PM +0000, Ian Lynch wrote:

> Yes its pretty close to extortion, asking for money with menaces. Sort
> of a digital protection racket.
> 
> The way they did the initial introduction was to suggest the school had
> done something illegal and that they needed to speak to someone about
> it. Highly unethical at best. Still probably shooting themselves in the
> foot now we have FLOSS alternatives.

Now you mention that I recall that when I was working as a sys-admin at
a (non-free) software company we had a similar call. The people on the 
phone even mentioned that they knew we had a large amount of servers as 
we had said so in a press article and also kept talking about how many
desktops we had as we had talked about staff numbers in the same article. 

Given that all of our servers apart from 2 were running Unix or Linux, 
and we were developing Unix/Linux software so 80% of our desktops were
running Linux we kept them on the phone for 30 minutes listening to the 
rubbish they were spouting. ISTR that we told them to piss off in the
end, and told them to go and get their search warrant that they had
threatened, of course they never came after us as it was a threat and
they were fishing for business in there (as you so eloquently put it) 
"digital protection racket".

Adam
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