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."

Comments

Good point

[erick99]

Groklaw seems rather peeved at SlashDot. Is it deserved? I'm not sure, but, it's worth thinking about.

I have not provided a link deliberately. If you wish to read her article, you can find it, I'm sure by a Google search or off of Slashdot, since they made what I consider the unfortunate editorial decision to give the story more widespread readership than it otherwise would have received.

Re:Good point

[tod_miller]

I commented a while ago regarding the news source definition of /.

Google ran a title from /. that misrepresented the very story they were aggregating. Thus /. dilluted the truth on this occassion to the detriment of the news reading folk.

Now a link in the very same /. that proclaims this stupid story here points out that groklaw put things to right.

However, groklaw v slashdot readship... so while I think this story is a bit redundant in news terms, it does go some way to patch up the and clearly show linuxworld.com to be a bunch of twerps.

I say each sotry categorically states its news source(s) linking to a modded style news source rating (which moves up and down etc)

Then msn.com/msnbc.com can royally go and fsck themselves in -1 universe.

The story google picked up on was the Kodak / Sun claim case. I think google shouldn't link Slashdot stories - as they are not news sources, but commentary on news sources.

Re:Good point

[igrp]

God - really common sense has to occasionally be used. Though I'm not in favour of censorship, such a blatant and unrealistic article should have at least been delayed a day or so before release.

Well, in my humble opinion, that's the real beauty. You not only get to make up your own mind. You get to read what others think about a statement, an assertion or a broader concept and make up your mind based on that.

It's a two-way approach, if you will. Unlike a newspaper, not a single entity decides if a story is "true" (if there even is such a thing). Sure, the editors decide if it's newsworthy, ie. if it gets approved and if it makes the frontpage. But the determination if what the story is about is non-sense or not is left to the reader.

And since Slashdot has such a wide-ranging readership, there are usually plenty of people to point out mistakes, misconceptions and straight-out lies and add insight to a story. That's actually why I keep coming here - because I'm interested in other people's views. I usually already have an opinion before I read the first comments (I actually do the articles, at least most of the time). But there's always a comment that makes me go "hmm, I never looked at it like that".

That's what's so cool about having a global readership - diversity and perspective.

O'Gara has an anti-Linix/anti-Open Source history

[ezraekman]

Well, quickly browsing through other articles she's written, a pro-microsoft/anti-linux bias can clearly be shown. This isn't the first time GrokLaw has reported on O'Gara. She also seems to go for more sensational headlines, in general. I can't say I'm terribly surprised. Here's my favorite quote:

O'Gara's fondness for anonymous sources and unattributed quotes diminishes the corroborative value of the story.

My letter

[Mr.Ned]

Hello LinuxWorld editors,

I was very disappointed with the article "IBM Tells SCO Court It Can't Find AIX-on-Power Code" (http://www.linuxworld.com/story/46800_p.htm) by Maureen O'Gara. I was offended by the demeaning tone of the article which shamelessly mixed personal opinion with reported fact. However, it has come to my attention that the article may not even have fact in it - another reputable news site, Groklaw, apparently had several people on hand at that particular hearing and not only reported that nothing Ms. O'Gara claims to have happend did, but also that Ms. O'Gara was never there. The full article is available here (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041023 153851359).

I hope you investigate this matter to discover if Groklaw's claims are true. This is a serious breach of journalistic integrity that should not be ignored if LinuxWorld expects itself to be seen as a source of reliable news.

Thanks,

<me>

MS settled the suit they initiated

[bstadil]

Lindows had to change names due to trademark suits from Microsoft,

MS paid them $20M to change names after it looked like they were going to lose the very dubious Windoes Trademark. MS sued and pretty much lost.

I'm not so sure...

[Xenographic]

I don't dispute that the man seems to me like he has a screw loose (and that just from the posts I've seen by him--there are plenty of others who offer evidence that would tend to support the idea that he's clear out of his mind).

Anyhow, if you read this Groklaw story, you'll see that there may be a SCO lawyer connection here. That might be bad, because when they talked to O'Gara, they sure went on a lot about the privilege log and such concerning that privileged document SCO tried to read into the public record (which is *bad*). In other words, it *really* looks like SCO is leaking things it ought not to the media. Now, I can't prove any of that, but I would say that it's certainly beyond the appearance of impropriety to even discuss that with the media.

As for Merkey, here, I doubt he was behind the O'Gara stories here--I suspect O'Gara and a source close to SCO were. Expect IBM to be on the ball here and to start seeing just *what* all SCO has told the media. Now then, you're probably right about him coming up with more wild stories (buying Linux for $50,000 and putting it under a BSD license to "save" it... after he removes all the "SCO-owned" bits).

In other words, we can expect a LOT of crazy stuff before this story is over :] Damn, someone ought to make a movie out of it, though I guess it'd be hard to explain the importance of it to people who didn't follow this...

"Presserat"

[CaptainZapp]

In the German speaking sticks of the globe there's an institution called "Presserat", which translates roughly to press council.

It's not a government organisation, but rather a self control entity by the press.

The idea is, that the public or victim of a press campaign can file a complaint and they will determine if the general agreed upon press ethics where violated by that media and/or journalist.

Of course there are a lot of frivolous complaints around the lines "they shortened my letter to the editor" (which is perfectly fine as long the meaning is not distorted) or "this article hurt my feelings" (which a paper is not obliged to respect in the first place, you can stop reading it after all).

What is a clear violation is to publish gross accusations (Politico Suchnsuch embezzled the church bingo fund and then fucked a pig) without confronting the victim with such allegations prior to publishing. A practical example was a paper being reprimanded for fotoshoping water stains to a blood red color, to make the site of a terror attack more ghoulish.

Of course lying outright, possibly knowingly and heaven forbid! taking payola for such an outrage (alas I don't know if this was the case and would never accuse a fine member of the press of such an atrocity) is about as much violation of press ethics as humanly possible.

Finding are published and the idea is that the media in question is publicly hung up high and dry and shamed into humility.

It doesn't replace a libel court case, though but overall it seems to work pretty nicely.

Maureen O'gara has a wife???

[Stephen Samuel]

The actual article is entitled The Trials of Getting My Wife to Run Linux (LinuxWorld) and claims to be authored by Maureen O'Gara. The leading paragraph starts:

My wife runs Windows 98 on her little 300mhz computer and it basically does what she needs - some photo editing, writing of documents, spreadsheets, e-mail, and Web surfing. ...

Not much wiggle room there. I can see 3 possible explanations here:

1. Maureen is Lesbian... I live on the west coast (Vancouver), so that's not only not hard to swallow -- It seems entirely feasable.
2. She's in a polyamorous relationship. Given that she likes supporting SCO, who hail from Utah, This too, doesn't strike me as entirely unreasonable. (yes, I know that most people in Utah only have one spouse, but Polygamy is at least more infamous there than anywhere else).
3. She's fobbing off someone else's as her own and didn't even botheer to do the most minimal of editing before posting it.
4. Personally, I'd say that #3 is the most disturbing of the three.

5. I guess we could add #4, that she's really a transgendered "he", but I'd say you could swallow that inside of #1.