Coders win, winners code (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

NewsForge covers coding contests by TopCoder. "TopCoder announced on September 29 the completion of the final elimination round in the Algorithm Competition portion of its 2004 annual TopCoder Open coding contest. But the real winner may be TopCoder's open source development model, which gives programmers a chance to build enterprise applications for cash prizes."

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Coders win, winners code (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 22:36 UTC (Tue) by jtc (guest, #6246) [Link]

> Hughes said the convictions behind "free software" are destined to die. "I > don't think there's any way to make that last. People just aren't going to > work on things for free for very long. It's not a workable model."

That's a rather strange quote that leads me to suspect that Hughes doesn't quite understand what free software is. (E.g., Linux is free software. Are the major developers of Linux doing their work for free, for no pay? I don't think so.)

FUD

Posted Oct 6, 2004 9:57 UTC (Wed) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link]

Yes, this article calls for a FUD warning. Note that Microsofts money is behind this one. It's rather well hidden FUD, you don't notice it before halfway into the article. Most people won't even see it as attacking anything/body, but I don't think the confusion is out of pure ignorance. Of course it could be.

FUD

Posted Oct 7, 2004 5:21 UTC (Thu) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

Of course MS's money is "behind" it. Every large software development company funds TopCoder -- it's a good way to find, well, good coders.

Is it that hard to believe people can have opinions unless they're being paid off by MS? Or that people who take money from MS can have informed, accurate opinions?

FUD

Posted Oct 8, 2004 6:55 UTC (Fri) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link]

No, I have heard many uninformed opinions were I knew for certain that MS had nothing to do with it :-)

As for this article, it could very well fall into that category too. If it is deliberate FUD, I think it was better than average. (With "better" I mean it was subtle and cleverly presented.)