01.09.09
Linux Magazine and Novell: Conflict of Interests
Totally missing the point
Novell’s PR people proudly (yet blindly) announce that they were well placed in Linux Magazine, but they neglect to mention a serious conflict of interests.
Linux Magazine has peered into its crystal ball and picked Novell as one of its “Top 20 Companies to Watch in 2009”.
[...]
Linux Magazine notes our SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Subscription with Expanded Support program as well as our groundbreaking partnership with Microsoft and the development work being undertaken as part of that partnership.
“Groundbreaking partnership with Microsoft,” eh?
One of the key people in Linux Magazine is Zonker (Joe Brockmeier), who is now leading the OpenSUSE community as a Novell employee. No conflict or interests there, eh?
“One of the key people in Linux Magazine is Zonker (Joe Brockmeier), who is now leading the OpenSUSE community as a Novell employee.”Novell’s relationships in mainstream media have always made it difficult to trust coverage. The same goes for smaller sites like OStatic by the way, as Zonker is an author there [1, 2]. They promote Novell products like Mono and even Go-OOXML (several times in fact). Kristin, who is Zonker’s colleague, covers a lot of OpenSUSE, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].
We have already commented on Zonker’s appointment and what it means to Novell when they hire a journalist. They can manipulative coverage and thus alter public perception.
This is also happening right now in CIO Magazine (of IDG|IDC [1, 2, 3]). Zonker is preaching about “Corporate Contributions”, which is the tune Novell wants to sing in order to isolate grassroots from “commercial”, “enterprise” and other buzzwords that elevate Novell’s status at the expense of "unsupported" distributions. He does the same thing in his ZDNet blog, albeit it’s rather subtle. █
“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
Victor Soliz said,
January 9, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Cut these guys some slack already. You got to accept that “Novell employee names Novell as one of the top 20 companies to watch in 2009″ was a very bad header.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 9, 2009 at 8:06 pm
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7221
“Once again — with remarkable clarity — we peer into our crystal ball and pick which companies in and around open source are going to grab your attention in 2009″
(They even did a press release about this gut feeling outburst)
“IBM, Citrix, Cisco, Novell, Microsoft, Terracotta, Dell, Zimory, Check Point, Astaro, Likewise Software, Open-Xchange, Coraid, Parallels, VMware, Hyperic, ScaleMP, NetGear…”
One reader tells us: “Citrix: is more purely Open Source with its XenServer, based on the Xen hypervisor [...] Cisco: leveraging Linux as a platform for developers with their ISR routers [...] Odd there, no mention of Red Hat or Canonical [...] who owns/runs Linux Mag?”
Victor Soliz said,
January 9, 2009 at 8:08 pm
I was going to point this out, just found it.
It is crazy
Maybe this article is quite right, and we need to watch out for these companies, maybe the article is actually a warning…
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 9, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Well, Cisco is a massive GPL violator and Citrix is still serving Microsoft 24/7.
It must be spring. April 1st comes early to Linux Magazine.