Summary: Linux Magazine, whose writer works for Novell, advertises Novell with a contest and beyond

BACK in January we wrote about a jaw-dropping conflict of interests at the magazine whose stewardship is known to include a Novell employee. The short story is that Linux Magazine gave Novell some special honours despite the possibility that those who decide are neither readers nor voters. Now we find the very same magazine advertising SUSE with a contest:

Does your datacenter need a power boost? Looking to deploy Linux in the near future? Let us know and be registered to win an HP ProLiant BL280c G6 Server Blade powered by an Intel Xeon processor, pre-loaded with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11. Register now!

Not compelling enough? How about the top banner? or the Novell logo? Never mind the Novell-boosting contest. In addition, on the right-hand-side pane, one may find that 3 out of 4 white papers are for SUSE, and just one is for Red Hat. To be fair, not all pages are like that. Still, it leaves some room for doubt.

Speaking of collision of interests, how about this from the news?

Likewise Open and Citrix XenServer Bring Security and Openness to Virtual Servers

[...]

Come June, this will no longer be the case. Citrix has integrated Likewise's Open software with its XenServer virtualization software, so that virtual servers running in mixed network environments can be secured just as easily as physical machines.

Likewise is former Microsoft employees and Citrix is one of the closest Microsoft allies and the company's Partner of the Year for 2008. This would easily deceive those who think it's an "open source" news item. ⬆