Groklaw criticises Novell VP. Awaiting response in 3... 2... 1...

Summary: Groklaw comes under fire for speaking about taboo areas; More examples that are given here are a case of spin and authors not sticking to facts.

Discrediting Groklaw is a convenient tactic for those who want to bury its latest analysis of Mono, Miguel de Icaza, and Microsoft. The same thing happened when Groklaw 'dared' to criticise Novell for its fork of OpenOffice.org^*. GreyGeek wrote in response to Groklaw's analysis:

PJ shows that de Icaza is NOT ignorant of patent law, or the patent status of the many components of MONO. In fact, as I pointed out in another talkback, in a 2004 interview he was asked about the patent problems of the GUI components of MONO and reported that he was aware of them and was removing IP tainted code from MONO. In July of this year, when it was revealed that those very same components were STILL IN MONO and not covered by ECMA 334 & 335, he said he was putting the MONO team to work "removing them into a non-free repository". Apparently de Icaza is going to depend on using GTk2+ bindings to give MONO visual appeal, but that raises the question of why using MONO at all since GTK supplies all the tools necessary to build native Linux applications, as de Icaza's own GNumeric and Evolution, have proven.

There are many other interesting bits in that comment. Many people support Groklaw's point of view, whereas others choose to mock it (or mock the messenger). We choose not to link to these, for obvious reasons. But how so very typical! Someone who admits doing work for Microsoft at the moment joins OStatic and the very first item on his agenda (first post ever) is an amateurish attack on Boycott Novell. How predictable, much like those Microsoft TEs who smeared us here without disclosure [1, 2].

Anyway, there are other items of deception or FUD worth noticing out there today. Here are some lies that compare Microsoft dumping (gratis, short-term illusion of savings) to FOSS. We addressed this stunt the other day. It's actually an anti-FOSS move.

A publication called "The Big Money" (from Slate Magazine and therefore with Microsoft/Gates influence [1, 2]) mocks rivals of Microsoft Office despite the fact that Office is losing ground (smaller margins, lost market share) and there is other possible propaganda at Forbes Magazine, which uses "crowdsourcing" opinions to dismiss the business models of mass participation, despite many success stories (e.g. Wikipedia).

So what's my problem? Why does it bug me that people think crowdsourcing is something it is not? Why do I care that people think a crowd is capable of individual virtuosity? What bugs me is that misplaced faith in the crowd is a blow to the image of the heroic inventor. We need to nurture and fund inventors and give them time to explore, play and fail. A false idea of the crowd reduces the motivation for this investment, with the supposition that companies can tap the minds of inventors on the cheap.

The article is filled with fallacies and it is hostile to whatever threatens existing business franchises. Well, that's just Forbes being Forbes. The author is also using "open source" and Linux as examples to downplay. ⬆ ____ ^* When Richard Stallman spoke about Mono the same thing happened, namely attempt to diminish the messenger's impact.