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Buyer beware: pointless text file wins 16 software awards
An amusing story over on Successful
Software.Net highlights the risky side
of relying on freeware and shareware for any mission-critical purpose.
Andy Brice, a UK-based software developer, had grown suspicious about "awards"
ascribed to freeware and shareware programs that he knew lacked functions and
features of rival offerings. So he invented a program named AwardMeStars. It
didn't run; in fact, it wasn't actually a program. It was a text file comprised
solely of the words, "This program does nothing at all," and renamed as an
executable (.EXE). He had a third party submit his file to just about every
software aggregation site; then he sat back to watch the results.
His non-operating, do-nothing program won 16 awards. Various cites labeled
it "Certified 5-Star," "Editor's Pick," and "Cool Discovery." All of them,
obviously, from sites that didn't even bother to note the blatant name of the
program, nor try to run it even once.
What's going on? Brice surmises that the software sites award their top rating
to everything submitted, in hopes that the software authors will boast of the
awards on their own sites and link back to the aggregator sites -- thus, raising
the aggregator site's rankings in search engines.
Small businesses in particular love to rely upon low-cost solutions, and since
shareware typically comes from an author with no marketing budget, network
administrators who use free tools often find themselves downloading a piece
of code they've never heard of. Well, if you're relying on "reviews" and "awards"
to help you judge the reputation of that freeware, move carefully. Here is
one more reason you should dedicate a computer to being your test machine,
keep it off your primary network -- and try before you buy. Or, in the case
of freeware, enjoy before you deploy.
Kudos to Brice for sharing his story, and further kudos to Slashdot affiliate
freshmeat.com for being one of the few sites to reject Brice's "program." To
see the list of sub-standard sites that issue the awards, check out Brice's
full story. --D. Scott Pinzon,
CISSP
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