06.04.08
Gemini version available ♊︎FUD Gauge Oscillates in Slashdot and SourceForge Again
What Brian at Linux Today once labeled “how not to treat your readership [or audience]“
One particular article that was highlighted by Slashdot yesterday serves as a brilliant FUD piece against the GPL. It made the front page. While its aim is to shed light on what becomes an integral part of almost every software, it politely ‘misunderstands’ a few important concepts. Rather than view to the article again, consider reading the following rebuttal.
Irreconcilable conflict between $ and Open Source ?!
[...]
I guess this particular attorney has never heard of Red Hat (aiming for $1 billion in revenue), Oracle (runs its own infrastructure on open source software), Cisco (world’s largest networking vendor that is now backing Linux) and many other for profit vendors that all have somehow RECONCILED open source and profit
But that’s not all. As you may already know, Microsoft sponsors SourceForge Awards. It takes pride as ‘the’ one company which is seemingly running the show with Visual Studio and FUD-invoking ‘prizes’ (the awards of shame). That is still the case. Remember that only Microsoft is listed among the/as a sponsor (nothing has changed since the last time) and now comes even worse FUD from Slashdot (same owners as SourceForge), which portrays open source as potentially illegal.
Nominations Open For “Most Likely to be Shut Down By Government”
The corporate overlords at SourceForge asked me to name a Slashdot category for their upcoming Community Choice Awards and to let you guys select the winner. I have named my category “Most Likely to be Shut Down by a Government Agency.” We’re going to run this like we do an Ask Slashdot call for questions — post your nominations into the comments here. Use moderation to send up good ideas. In the upcoming days we’ll post another story where you can vote on the actual winner. Nominations need to include the project name, a link to some sort of official website, and a paragraph of why you think they deserve to win. The project that wins will gain fame, notoriety, and maybe a cease and desist order that they could print out and frame if they had that kind of time.
It’s funny that Rob Malda begins with “The corporate overlords at SourceForge.” Who are they? Who runs the show? Is it not the sponsors?
Overall, by reading Slashdot, what can one conclude? That open source is anti-profit-making corporations and that any day it might be “shut down by government”? Maybe it’s just flamebait, but it’s happening far too frequently these days. It definitely does not encourage Free software adoption. █
ᶃ Gemini Space
This post is also available in 
Content is available under CC-BY-SA
Jose_X said,
June 4, 2008 at 10:47 am
I would nominate http://www.microsoft.com or whatever the website is called.
First they will be shut out of government. Then they will be shut down for failure to stop their various illegal practices and eventual failure to pay the mortgage (or taxes or whatever).
Shane Coyle said,
June 4, 2008 at 11:03 am
I am still holding out hope that SueMe Linux will somehow get a nod in for the most likely to get users sued.
I mean, look at those balance sheet liabilities – how could they not?
Roy Schestowitz said,
June 4, 2008 at 11:53 am
Heh. Put “Bill Gates” under maintainer name. Let them self-nuke if they sue.
RyanT said,
June 4, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I don’t get the second one – it has absolutely no reference to OPen Source at all. Where’s the FUD exactly?
Roy Schestowitz said,
June 4, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Follow the link in Slashdot: http://sourceforge.net/community/cca08
Community Choice Awards. That’s open source projects on SourceForge. Watch the other ‘awards’ and the sponsor.