Bonum Certa Men Certa

Firm of Microsoft's 'Former' Manager Explains Its Marketing of a Bug That Created Unreasonable Scare and FUD Against Free Software

Summary: "We've obviously got a lot more name recognition than we did before," explains the firm of Mr. Schmidt

BRITIAN'S The 'Guardian' has a new article which finally asks the right question: "why did a computer bug have a name and a logo?"



We already know, based on a post-mortem and a timeline, that the firm behind the branding had nothing to do with originally finding the bug. It just exploited and capitalised on it to spread FUD against Free software, never really noting the Microsoft connection and the mysterious timing. It was a huge marketing campaign of some kind. Months ago we wrote about some openssl flaws, but none made the press as much as this whole "Heartbleed" thing, which many journalists are finally saying was overblown. We are generally trying not to waste time by promoting distracting articles about this bug which had already been patched (by all major GNU/Linux distributors) before it was made public knowledge.

Watch what the opportunists at Codenomicon are saying (the CEO): "I really believe that the name and the logo and the website helped fuel the community interest in this" (and spread lots of security FUD against GNU/Linux on the very same date that Window XP support ended).

Down at the bottom the article states: "It's not all altruism. Chartier foresees a boost in Codenomicon's prospects in the future. "We've obviously got a lot more name recognition than we did before," he says."

So as we said before, this was self-promotion for a firm that works with Microsoft and has Microsoft connections. It is also timely FUD for Microsoft and its media moles to capitalise on, as they demonstrably did.

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