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

It's SCO revisionist history

[Xpilot]

Don't believe SCO's revionist history! Han Fired first, dammit.

Re:It's SCO revisionist history

[Nurseman]

I'm shocked.You mean a journalist would listen to someone who has an axe to grind, not check simple facts, and use forged documents to support its claim.? Someone call Mike Wallace. He needs to do a story on this !!

Re:Groklaw is NOT a reputable source

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Much more reliable information can be found at the ProSCO website.

Hope that helps.

Re:Groklaw is NOT a reputable source

[jponster]

Don't you think there's a certain irony about a poster on Slashdot saying to take anything you read on Groklaw with a pinch of salt?

Jeff Merkey's behind this.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Groklaw is NOT a reputable source

[Anonymous Coward]

> Groklaw is heavily censored and always has been. PJ deletes/
> hides posts on a regular basis.

Logical fallacy. Response posts have nothing to do with the repository of information and editorials.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

> "unfortunate editorial decision to give the story more
> widespread readership than it otherwise would have received."

If you take it that slashdot is a place that performs editorial checks on submissions then yes, but I don't think it's designed to be that. It's a link dump with a place for us to comment.

Nobody comes here for just the stories, it's the comments on those that are important, and as part of the self correcting nature of an unedited site, you get submissions like the one all the comments you're now reading are a response to.

In other words, the O'Gara article came out, and slashdot linked to it. Then the groklaw correction came out, and slashdot linked to it too.

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.

Please stop the FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Everytime a story involving Groklaw comes up these kind of posts appear on /.
They always claim that Groklaw is not a reputable source, make certain claims about the site, like for example that it has a nazgul posting policy and never, ever back their claims up with anything.

Also note that these kind of posts are always posted by ACs. (Just like my post, I know, but I simply don't have an account).

These kind of posts are neither interesting, nor are they insightful, they are plain and simple FUD!

Re:Sources ?

[born_to_live_forever]

Who needs sources, when you've biased reporting and scurrilous innuendo?

Milo Bloom: Senator? This is Milo Bloom at the Beacon. Will you confirm that you sunk Jimmy Hoffa in your backyard pond?
Senator Bedfellow: What? Of course not!
Milo: Fine. I'll go with "Sen. Bedfellow denies that pond is where he sunk Hoffa."
Bedfellow: That's not true!
Milo: Okay. "Bedfellow did sink Hoffa in pond".
Bedfellow: I don't know where Hoffa is!!
Milo: "'I lost the body' says Bedfellow."

Re:Maureen O'Gara herself refutes the article

[raju1kabir]

It seems even Maureen O'Gara thinks the article was not true

Har har har.

Further up in the comments:

William Gates commented on 23 October 2004:
Thanks for the Pro-SCO article Maureen. I'll be sending you another $20,000 soon. Keep up the good work.

Darl McBride commented on 23 October 2004:
Everything Maureen has said is exactly true. I can't believe that we haven't used this in our case! Keep up the good work! We could really use some advice.

Are you truly surprised?

[born_to_live_forever]

Are you truly surprised that it would still apply?

This SCO story isn't just one instance of bogus journalism - it's a hypotypical example of the weaknesses of the journalistic profession as a whole (although I hesitate to lump that person in with the real professionals). This sort of thing isn't something that we're ever going to "get over", because it isn't just a "sign of the times". It's an endemic condition.

There's always going to be a difference between conscientious professionals and sloppy hacks. In any profession, not just journalism.

Caveat lector.

Maureen has spammed me (over and over)

[volkerdi]

Let LinuxWorld know what you think of the journalistic integrity of their writer.

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.