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JBoss Caught in Anonymous Posting Scheme
Reader scubabear writes "For years rumors have run rampant about employees of JBoss Inc. being actively encouraged to post anonymously, drumming up business by flooding the net with fake posts and simultaneously attacking competitors, all from behind a safe veil of anonymity. With the advent of a new feature for tracking users by IP on TheServerSide.com, the floodgates have been opened and those rumors have apparently been confirmed.
The Java blog space now erupted with posts from a variety of bloggers (here, here, and here for a start) exposing a variety of anonymous/pseudonymous accounts used by JBoss employees to put forth their Professional Open Source message and simultaneously slam anyone who gets in their way in online technical communities such as TheServerSide, JavaLobby, and various personal blogs. The evidence shows how a corporation can manipulate popular opinion via anonymous personalities, that open source companies can be just as ruthless as closed source when it comes to marketing their wares, and that you should never forget that your cookies and IP address can and will be tracked online. No official response has been heard yet from the JBoss crew. Disclosure: I'm one of those bloggers erupting on this issue (see my story here)."
When google fails ;)
JBoss
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
JBoss (pronounced Jay Boss) is an open source, Java based application server. Because it is Java based, JBoss can be used on any operating system that supports Java. It is open source, but a company (also named JBoss) creates it. The company has a tech consultation service, but the consultants spend half of their time programming.
JBoss implements the entire J2EE suite of services.
The Sims Online uses JBoss to run its multiplayer games.
Sorry, not even close. I'm not an employee of CDN, have never been, am not affiliated with them in any way. Neither are the other bloggers referenced. The only person referenced with any affiliation with JBoss is Rickard, who used to be a major committer on JBoss.
The reason I blogged about this is really simple: truth. Yeah, I know, that sounds trite and stupid, but that really is the main motivation. JBoss people have been posing with very convincing names like "Chip Tyler" and "Joe Murray" for quite some time now, talking up their own product, dissing people like the CDN folks, and directly going after people like me. Some of it got quite nasty as well - and all under the cover of fake names. NOT anonymous ones - no Anonymous Coward. One of them - someone claiming to be Arun Patel but really a senior JBoss executive - went so far as to say online that he worked for WIPRO in Bangalore, India, and to attempt to prove that I was a shill. And he did this when the guy actually has e-mailed me and knew exactly who I really am. The icing on the cake is that the individual _setup the fake Arun Patel account using his real corporate e-mail address_.
This isn't about a vendetta, or revenge, or personalities clashing. It's about exposing a company that uses deceitful tactics to gain market share and simultaneosuly attack individuals and companies. I personally don't care if it's common or not - no matter how prevalent it may, it's still wrong and it should be rooted out and exposed when it's discovered.
Keep in mind also that this was a coordinated corporate policy, and it involved the "big names" at JBoss, and sometimes the weight of faker posts would actually overwhelm entire threads.
It was coordinated, it was nasty, and had high volumes over a span of well over a year.
-Mike Spille