11.20.08
Sys-Con is Copyrighting Slightly Modified Press Releases
Novell lost some of its PlateSpin seniors a couple of months ago, but Stephen Pollack, whom we mentioned in [1, 2, 3], is still around although he’s engaging with companies other than Novell. Here is the press release about it.
Embotics, the Virtualization Lifecycle Management™ Company, today announced the appointment of Stephen Pollack to its Advisory Board. Stephen Pollack is a recognized leader in the virtualization industry who founded PlateSpin, Ltd. Acquired by Novell in March 2008, PlateSpin Ltd. is ranked 11th on the Deloitte North American Fast 500 list and helps organizations worldwide build more flexible, interoperable and cost-effective data center environments. With the addition of Pollack, the Advisory Board will continue to help guide Embotics’ direction, organization and strategy for product and company growth.
Sys-Con’s unattributed ‘plagiarism’ is a subject that was covered before. It’s a chronic and systematic disease over at Con-Sys, whose writers ‘plant’ stories on behalf of companies like Microsoft [1, 2]. That’s just part of a broader issue with Sys-Con. It’s also spamming the Google News feeds with a garbled mess. It has done this for a long time. Anyway, as the latest example of iffy stuff, watch this ‘article’, which is mostly an edited copy of the press release.
Embotics has announced the appointment of Stephen Pollack to its Advisory Board. Stephen Pollack is a recognized leader in the virtualization industry who founded PlateSpin. Acquired by Novell in March 2008, PlateSpin is ranked 11th on the Deloitte North American Fast 500 list and helps organizations worldwide build more flexible, interoperable and cost-effective data center environments. With the addition of Pollack, the Advisory Board will continue to help guide Embotics’ direction, organization and strategy for product and company growth.
At the bottom it states “© 2008 SYS-CON Media Inc.” So, slight modifications (renditions) of the press release make it an ownership of someone. Groklaw wrote about this phenomenon not so long ago. █
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.