Fleech

noun

Slang for “FOSS leech”

1. An individual or entity whose products and/or services are built entirely upon free open-source software (FOSS). They never contribute enhancements, features, nor bugfixes back to the FOSS projects. Easily discernible by the number of complex feature requests they submit while complaining it’s not done on their timeline despite never donating funds to support development of the project.

2. An entity, usually that of a large corporation, that preys on small FOSS projects with groundbreaking ideas by imitating the codebase in a new language. The entity will then leverage the new codebase to market a new “as-a-service” product with a subscription or “pay as you go” model with varying tiers of enterprise support. May or may not wind up threatening legal action against the small project, sometimes through DCMA, to force the project offline and direct its users to their pay-for product.

3. An entity, usually an individual, that touts accomplishments or career-defining experience from a foundation built on FOSS projects but has no demonstrable experience in creating their own. These often overlap with “script kiddies” but differ in the fact that they have many years of relevant work experience with no capacity of critical thinking.

The job candidate we interviewed was a complete fleech. His resume listed him having 7 years of hacker experience and yet he was only able to name nmap and Nessus as his go-to tools. When we gave a scenario of a target machine having a port open and asking how he’d go about testing it, he only said he would search Google for the port number.

So I got done talking to John about this product the VP was so hyped about. It’s some blockchain bullshit using Elasticsearch and Kibana on Kubernetes to aggregate terms and search their popularity. It’s a complete fleech and a waste of time.

We got a sales pitch for this new “enterprise-grade” Linux distro that sells you a perpetual license for $40 a seat. When asked about their security patch and release plan, they let us in on the fact that they’ll sometimes patch vulnerabilities but refuse to submit it upstream to help the original distro address security concerns. That’s some Grade A fleech bullshit to try and convince your customers that you’re more secure.

by Impotent Turkey Juggler June 2, 2022

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