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Groklaw Refutes LinuxWorld Story About AIX Sources
rimberg writes "Maureen O'Gara printed a story about what allegedly was said in the last court hearing between IBM and SCO. Groklaw had eyewitnesses at the hearing. None of them reports seeing Ms. O'Gara there. Furthermore, none of them heard any of what she 'reports' about IBM supposedly claiming not to be able to find code. Let me repeat that. IBM never said anything like that, according to groklaw eyewitnesses."
Jeff Merkey has been involved in contacting media figures around OSS centric sites, and it's the information he's involved in spreading that's problematic.
Like he's been known to do before, he spreads several versions of the "truth", often completely at odds with one another depending on which situation he's in at the moment. Having had to deal with him in the past, I can only say: He's going to get worse, and quickly. Never was a repository of 'just the fact ma'am' needed.
The plan? to push management towards prosco.net as it will appear one HELL of a sane place compared to OSS news sites that insist on following Merkey's manipulations.
Either Maureen O' Gara (the real one) posted that or someone else posted it under her name. Other commenters include "Linux guy", "Johnny Cash" and I remember seeing "Darl McBride" himself post somewhere there (although it's now removed). There's no way of knowing if, in fact, it was the real Maureen or an imposter.
Doesn't Linus _own_ the Linux trademark now? This being the case, is there not some form of direct action he could take, forcing anti-Linux websites from using the word "Linux" in their name?
If he were able to do that with a trademark, then Microsoft would have too, and would have censored every anti-MS news site out there.
Considering the MS tactic of being bitches with the law, if they could have they would have, since they didn't they can't.
What's really sad is just how old that comic you're quoting is. It's from the mid 80's, I think. Sad that it would still apply (and a testament to Breathed's understanding of the world).
RJ
maureen@sys-con.com
If you would like to contact Maureen O'Gara to let her know your thoughts you can do so at the following URL:
http://www.sys-con.com/author/?id=2390
-={ Security does not exist - give up }=-
Remember the *other* O'Gara story? About IBM's "discovery abuse"? Funny, that may well have been put out by SCO--see here. Groklaw refutes yet another wild story.
:]
As an aside, though, that sure looks like a direct quote of the article in the story above. I wish submitter had at least put it in quotes... *sigh*
where did the rumor that IBM said it couldn't find the sources come from ?
Ask and ye shall receive
One part of my job is providing technical support to a (real world) newsroom. In the past four years I struggle to remember a single occasion they followed up on, or drew as a source, a story from Slashdot. Most don't know what Slashdot is. Stories from Fark on the other hand appear daily for filler.
Slashdot is still first and foremost an online forum focusing mainly on computer technology. The 'editors' don't perform the same function news editors, they link to claims made elsewhere choosen to stimulate conversation, leaving it to contributors to sort out.
Good idea. However, since sys-con (the company behind this) has supported Maureen's spamming operation, I can't say I think they all that much in the way of "integrity". Complaining to them about anything has been a waste of time for me.
Allow me to explain. About two years ago I started getting "newsletters" from Maureen. To my knowledge, I never signed up for them or gave sys-con my primary email address. These were sent using a mailer by Lyris (according to their site "Lyris develops opt-in email marketing software"... oh, great), and were as spammy as can be. 10K to 20K of HTML marketing. Here's a partial sample:
To: "linuxgram"
...
From: "Linux Business Week"
Maureen O'Gara's LinuxGram
Maureen is single-handedly the reason why most companies in the software have abandoned having press conferences !
Linuxgram is published weekly by G2 Computer Intelligence Inc.
Send press releases to: news@g2news.com
Subscription price per year: $195/?140 individual reader.
Maureen O'Gara's LinuxGram Breaking News
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-linuxgram-2307683E@mailbox.sys-con.com
I will assure you that, for me, sending the blank unsubscription email was about as effective as pissing in the wind. I complained to every address I could think of @sys-con.com but the garbage continued to arrive. I finally had to resort to adding this block to sendmail:
207.178.67.103 ERROR:"550 known spammers (sys-con) blocked by SPOO database"
Suffice to say that I've (whenever possible) avoided doing business with sys-con ever since, and have lost most of the respect I might have had for them. So now they're spreading lies about the SCO case? Big surprise. Maybe there was some cash in it for them.