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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."
I often sign myself 'Simon the cynic' when I read about personage X making some sweeping statement about how things are going to be - but for me it comes down to where the benefit is to be had. If there is no precedent or no perceivable advantage, my reaction is often (as the Poster's) "Yeah, right!".
In this case I have a (gut) feeling they're probably genuine. JBoss are up the proverbial creek - they're a commercial software house which relies on the same sort of markets as Open Source software, and they've just lost a lot of credibility. The only way out of it to them is to 'fess up, to publicly admit their wrongdoing, and pledge not to do it again. I'm also a firm believer in letting peoples actions decide my opinion of them - talk is after all cheap, especially in this digital age - and I believe in judging after the fact, not before. My regard for their (phenomenal) achievement dropped significantly when the story broke, but respect can be earnt over again. Let's see, indeed, but with an open mind.
Now that they *have* made a public pledge, and if they're caught again, it's game over in the reputation stakes. Anyone can make a mistake, and society usually forgives a single error of judgement - we generally expect people to learn, however. I think that this itself should be sufficient to keep them on the straight and narrow... Of course, this is just a different form of cynicism
I thought the idea that pollution of the information space was a "crime" in and of itself was an interesting point - I generally consider the net to be something of a cesspool, and it's not just cream that floats to the top... On the other hand, dive right in (yuck. Nasty mental image) and there's a lot on offer freely which would be otherwise hard to obtain. I wonder when (if) the balance will tip so there's more cream than crap.
Simon the cynic.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I'm more concerned with less intelligent companies who read this article and thought... Fake posts on the internet. What a great idea. While Astroturfing has always been around, mainstream articles about it are only going to give the un-enlightened new ideas.
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).
This is a brief description of astroturfing. I honestly had no idea what the heck it was.
No, this isn't an attempt at karma-whoring. Don't mod me up if you think it is. I figured it'd be more helpful to Google it myself and post the definition then to post a stupid one-liner "WTF is astroturfing?"
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I want to give the JBoss folks the benefit of the doubt, and I'm sure many others in the Java/J2EE community want to, too... but they just keep making it so damn hard.
Introduction: I've been accused of astroturfing.
Middle: JBoss is great, JBoss rocks, JBoss has great developers
...
JBoss is King, long reign JBoss, love the JBoss.
Conclusion: OK, no more astroturfing.
Not once does he explain why it was done, but then he hardly even touches on the issue.
Perhaps a direct apology would see the $10M VC be yanked from under Fleury's schitzophrenic hands?
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.
Out of curiosity, what would you have him do? Seppuku? Pay people to download JBoss, instead of giving it away for free? Clean your refrigerator?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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