06.03.08
Beware the Novell Talking Heads and Passive Sympathisers
Good publicity through wealth and pressure
About a month ago we wrote about what was called "Novell boosters" in the press. There are several people whose eyes are kept regularly on Novell (e.g. in Beta News), employees whose role in the press reveals a conflict of interest, and other naive people who are simply used by Novell to propagate public relations messages as though they are facts.
Matt Asay used to be a vocal critic of Novell (despite his past career at Novell). The guys at Novell, some of whom are former colleagues of his, bent his arm a little on numerous occasions and gave him a hard time.
Over time, things changed. He couldn’t criticise Novell in peace any longer, no matter how justified him claims and accusations were. He was receiving E-mails while his new partner at CNET (Dave of MuleSource) received rabid trolling that he told me about. ‘Daring’ to tell Novell off became a no-no, or at least became a burden and a risk. Things changed a little further more recently when Asay did some PR stunts around Novell’s poor financial results [1, 2, 3].
Not much has changed. He now comes out (yes, once more) to defend Novell’s latest FUD attack on Red Hat. He actually pushed this into Linux Today, by submission. Here is the first response (the only one at the time of writing):
Matt Asay - believing anything he read this afternoon.
…Novell stands more-or-less alone in the enterprise Linux desktop market. Just ask Peugeot, Italy’s parliament, and the others who use SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.
So I’m guess that Novell just sent Matt Asay an press release about those two deployments.
…Ubuntu owns the consumer Linux desktop market (through deals with Dell and others), but Novell may well stand alone (for now) in the enterprise market.
Or … it MAY NOT!
You’ll never know because you cannot do any research. All you can do is parrot whatever you’ve heard most recently.
What is Novell’s market share for SuSE?
How does that compare to Ubuntu’s market share?
You don’t know? How could I have guessed that?
…Or perhaps Red Hat and Ubuntu are approaching the enterprise Linux desktop market through the most strategically important ways: Developing nations (Red Hat) and consumers (Ubuntu). Your thoughts?
Again, why not do the research yourself?
This make one sigh. To think that all this shallow analysis about GNU/Linux on the desktop comes from a person who earlier today (or yesterday) boasted about the use of Macs and argued that open source developers were moving to Macs, which is not true but more of a case of wishful thinking for those seeking to justify personal preference and sometimes incompetence in dealing with intuitive GNU/Linux distributions (or stubbornness that antagonises learning curve).
The same pitch is repeatedly echoed also by Sam Dean over at OStatic. People who do not use GNU/Linux ought to write less about it (if at all). Comparing distributions or assessing differences without actually knowing or using them means that the speculative press — rather than actual users — can deceive and inappropriately set trends based on perception alone. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
stevetheFLY said,
June 3, 2008 at 2:57 pm
It’s funny to see you criticize a style of writing that you yourself endulge in all the time…
Phrasing many ‘perhapses’, ‘maybes’ and ‘?’, not doing your research…
So, your criticism on this one we all have to take with great, great reservations.
Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from a possible incarnation of a known (eet), pseudonymous, forever-nymshifting, abusive Internet troll that posts from open proxies and relays around the world.
Miles said,
June 3, 2008 at 3:26 pm
So basically what you are saying is that so long as Matt Asay’s articles agree with your agenda, you’ll quote his article as fact, but the minute an article of his doesn’t agree with your agenda, you say that no one should listen to him.
Nice.