Jerry A. Taylor, the city manager of Tuttle city made a fool out of himself after his hosting provider, having server issues, failed to maintain their servers and had to bring down the website of the city. The replacement page shown was the default CentOS page for newly installed Apache configurations.

The original story can be read at theregister.com and the full transcripts of the emails mentioned in it can be found at www.centos.org .

In summary, Mr Taylor, being faced with the CentOS default page , thought he had been hi-jacked by the evil CentOS hackers, and instead of contacting his hosting company, contacted CentOS and threatened to involve the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Why? Because of his obvious competence:
"I am computer literate! I have 22 years in computer systems engineering and operation. Now, can you tell me how to remove 'your software' that you acknowledge you provided free of charge? I consider this 'hacking.'"

Well, if he considers himself to be computer literate he obviously can't be literate in the general sense. That, or he is just a moron. Although the answer is probably a mixture of the both, the saga continues.

Instead of accepting his mistakes as Sunk Cost ( en.wikipedia.org ) he keep blaming others, and insults the real computer literates. In an article in Tuttle Times ( www.tuttletimes.com ) he states the following:

"This is just a bunch of freaks out there that don't have anything better to do," he said. "When I came in to work Monday morning, I had about 500 e-mails, plus anonymous phone calls from all the geeks out there. [CentOS is] a free operating system that this guy gives away, which tells you how much time he’s got on his hands."

Taylor said that the mistake could have happened to anyone, and he stands by what he did.

This shows how great his lack of respect is for the developers that create the software his city runs on. And the thing is; this thing can only happen if you are completely ignorant and oblivious to the world around you.

Hopefully the population will notice his behavior and get rid of him.

Updated: 13:38
I have sent the following email to the mayor of Tuttle City:
Dear Mayor.

My name is Kristian Fiskerstrand. I am a 21 year old male from Norway
and I am writing you this electronic mail because of the behavior of one
of your city officials. The reason I am sending you this email is
because I find the situation highly offensive both towards a community I
identify with and myself.

I am talking about Mr. Jerry A. Taylor and his correspondence both with
the CentOS developer and his public reactions afterwards.

The Tuttle Times ran a story the 29th of March 2006 [1], in which Mr Taylor
is quoted: "This is just a bunch of freaks out there that don't have
anything better to do," he said. "When I came in to work Monday morning,
I had about 500 e-mails, plus anonymous phone calls from all the geeks
out there. [CentOS is] a free operating system that this guy gives away,
which tells you how much time he’s got on his hands."

I am myself a great advocate for Open Source Software (OSS). I am the
creator and maintainer of several projects, including but not exclusive
www.secure-my-email.com and www.secure-my-internet.com
related to computer security and www.yourblog.in as a place for
everyone to exercise their freedom of speech in the form of a chronicle.

What I want to know is: Is this acceptable behavior and the official
response from the City of Tuttle?

Yours sincerely

[1] www.tuttletimes.com