Wow! Just wow. Watch this breaking news story.

Interop : Open Source Panel Heckled and Walked Out On

[...]

About 15 minutes into the session an attendee shouted out,

"When are you going to talk about risk instead of just going back and forth talking about risks and benefits of open source?" the attendee shouted. "We're not here for the benefits, I don't want to insult you but that's not why I'm in here and if you're not going to take my question I'm going to walk out."

[...]

I've personally never seen anything like this. To be fair though the panel did seem to be all 'open source is great' but they did (Doug Levin in particular) talk about the risks that may exist.

Also to be fair though, all the panelists were in the open source business. That's how the program was listed in the program guide. If Interop really wanted a more robust/competitive session they could/should have added Microsoft to the panel.

Need anything more be said? More and more people have become fed up with the art of selling fear.

“More and more people have become fed up with the art of selling fear.”Fear mongering, such as yesterday's write-up from Paul at Disinformation Week (no direct link, as intended), is also far too shallow. We could go further by highlighting some of the iffy business that we bring up every now and then. No need for names to be called because we then get E-mails from unhappy companies that perceive it as bad publicity... well, talk about hypocrisy.

Anyway, in addition to this, as already mentioned earlier today, the level of AstroTurfing seems to have increased significantly in the past month. Remember our dear old 'friend' Jeff Gould? He is back for another cheap & quick stab at GNU/Linux (no direct link to the article in question).

Speaking about it to a familiar friend, we hear: "That is an example of the increase of astroturfing I'm seeing. Several (all?) forums are getting hit hard and often. I guess the upside is that the Microsoft movement is on the ropes and if everyone presses on, business can be rid of the Microsoft menace."

There are two spots or auditors that systematically pick up Gould's FUD pieces: Slashdot editors (whom we don't trust so much anymore) and LinuxToday. I pointed this out to the managing editor of the latter before, but the response was mixed.

With regards to the former, namely Slashdot, an anonymous reader says in private: "At least metamoderate so as to mitigate the damage. It takes 5 minutes twice a day."

For some more information about Gould's piece you can see this rebuttal. The opening says it all.

I don’t want to say that Jeff Gould is an idiot, but I may be forced to. By his idiocy. Before posting this or commenting on it, I thought I’d better find out who he is.

There is some other cheeky stuff in the 'press' at the moment. This includes some fluff from Erwin and Inquirer.net, which we complained about in the past. A commenter had it sort of confirmed that they probably just serve corporate agenda and in this case deliver lies from Oracle and Microsoft (promotion of their posturing, for benefits of non-standards). Consider this just a headsup and a warning. Very inaccurate articles appear in the press and they seem more like advertisements than informative pieces. ⬆

"Working behind the scenes to orchestrate "independent" praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy's, is a key evangelism function during the Slog. "Independent" analyst's report should be issued, praising your technology and damning the competitors (or ignoring them). "Independent" consultants should write columns and articles, give conference presentations and moderate stacked panels, all on our behalf (and setting them up as experts in the new technology, available for just $200/hour). "Independent" academic sources should be cultivated and quoted (and research money granted). "Independent" courseware providers should start profiting from their early involvement in our technology. Every possible source of leverage should be sought and turned to our advantage."

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]