Playboy spreads open source software

Found on Newsforge on Sunday, 05 June 2005
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Instead of visiting some dry, boring Web site to download your favorite open source software, why not put some spice in your life and get it from Playboy?

That spice is in name only, because you won't find any interesting pictures or stories at mirrors.playboy.com -- just a few unadorned directories linking to mirrors of the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) and the latest releases of FreeBSD, Apache, Fedora, and mod_ssl.

mirrors.playboy.com is even an official mirror site for Firefox and Thunderbird, says Playboy Unix administrator Tim Yocum. He wanted to give something back to the community from which his company has drawn so deeply.

Playboy's corporate management has warmly welcomed Yocum's moves toward open source. They appreciate the cost savings and, Yocum says, display an attitude of "whatever works." The push toward open source, he says, comes from the bottom up; the real fans of Apache and Perl are the network administrators, including himself, and they are fortunate to have bosses who give them the freedom to use open alternatives.

Now there's your excuse if you get caught by your boss. It cool to see companies contribute who don't really have to do much with software and computers.