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JBoss's Fleury Abjures Astroturfing
comforteagle writes "JBoss head honcho Marc Fleury has laid down the law about Astroturfing in the aftermath of being accused of the practice without actually admitting it was done. 'Our visibility and success puts our customers and partners in a situation where you expect and demand that employees of JBoss Inc. hold themselves to that higher standard. Let's put the professional back in professional open source. "Astroturfing" is hereby banned at JBoss, starting with me.'" jg21 writes "After the Slashdotting of the whole issue, the wider community took up the theme. LinuxWorld's editor in chief took to task those who sought to "pollute the knowledge space," and then Richard Öberg and Cameron Purdy took up the theme with a call to raise the cyber-bar when it coms to integrity. Now JBoss's CEO has recanted: there will be no more fake posts from JBoss staffers, he says. Hmm, time will tell."
It was an economic benefit for them to astroturf.. and now that they've been caught it's an economic liability(not to mention sleazy and embarassing) and so of course now they promise to be as pure as the driven snow.. utter crap. Nothing here but greedy people changing there tune to whatever is most profitable, if you have a choice then don't support JBoss.
and my alter-ego missed it too...
on topic though, as unprofessional as the whole jboss has unfolded, it is really more noise in the jboss vs. the world open-source java community debate.
honestly no one will roll an app server into production based on comments on a web site without trying the product, getting under the hood, and seeing if it fits (and if you do let's hope we never cross paths). in the end the quality of the product will speak for itself, not the over zealous marketers (oss or commercial).
One of my favorite things to see in these forums is when some moron tries to market their product in this way and is immediately exposed. The resulting flames directed at the jackass provide some of the most entertaining reading you see on the internet. Makes my day every time.
Worst. Sig. Ever.
For those of us who associate astroturf with football stadiums.
So, would fake posts which detract from a competitor's product be astromudding ?
Like "Open source is a cancer...." etc. ?
I posted something a few months ago about some personal experiences my gf had while working with Mr. Fleury and members of the JBoss team in close contact.
I have to tell you that he and his wife pay very close attention to this board and presumably other sites where their interests are reflected. I know this because the details of my post were soon known to them (under 24 hours), and caused some disarray in her household because her parents are personal friends of the Fleurys.
Basically, a guilt trip was delivered to her to squelch any further negative commentary regarding them. Given my past experience in this regard, I can't help but find the astroturfing semi-admission to be quite credible. Business isn't just business to them, and no tactic is beyond consideration if it furthers their livelihood.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Even the apology makes Fleury look bad. Instead of actually admitting that it happened, and apologizing and then promising that it wont happen again, he instead makes a grand gesture of saying that astroturfing is bad and isn't acceptable at JBoss.
Dude, we already knew it was unethical, we didn't need you to tell us. If this stuff was going on in your company then (a) admit it, (b) apologize.
But I'm glad that this whole thing came out in public, because the practice itself and the lame-ass apology speaks volumes about the integrity of the JBoss group.
John.
For the record, I e-mailed several JBossers on this, and two e-mailed me back. One admitted he'd done it outright and apologized (thank you for that). He claimed he was a lone wolf acting without corporate knowledge; I'm rather suspicious about _that_. The other also admitted he'd did it - and then went on and lambasted me with several pages of abuse, vitriol, and cursing. He danced around the policy issue. By "did it" I mean posting under fake-but-real-seeming names to promote their product, and to simultaneously attack competitors and critics of JBoss alike. The others have not responded. -Mike Spille