Dvorak on the LinuxWorld Fracas

An anonymous reader writes "John C. Dvorak has entered the fray, offering his opinion on the O'Gara LinuxWorld flap. From the article: '...the Linux community is slowly evolving into a state of mob rule, with the cheerleaders being paranoid crackpot leftovers from the waning days of Amiga.' "

Comments

Re:Oh god not dvorak

[Martin Blank]

He's actually right, to some extent. Go back further, and you'll find people like Walter Winchell, who, while bringing some really interesting stuff to light, also went out of their way to work with some really sleazy characters to get dirt on people that they didn't like, offended them, or otherwise were deemed worthy of public ridicule for their beliefs, actions, words, or other aspect, whether taken in context or not.

It never really went away. It was just relegated to the fringes of journalism.

LinuxWorld automated the editors

[Animats]

What really happened at LinuxWorld is described here, by Martin Brown, one of the staff who resigned. LinuxWorld's web site has been automated.

• "We have no control over the website; even the new one, which went live recently, is completely out of our control. Many people don't understand how this can be the case - even with the recent issues, many assume we have full and absolute control over content on the website. This simply wasn't the case. Instead the LinuxWorld.com website is an automatic amalgam of articles and posts from across Sys-Con that may, or may not, be Linux related. Our only direct way into providing content for our site was through our also recently enabled blogs (http://mc.linuxworld.com./ We have no control over the articles automatically added and syndicated on the site."

Remember, LinuxWorld's "staff" wasn't paid. So with no pay and no control, of course they quit. "Quitting" is barely a meaningful concept in a situation like that.

Re:Cheap shot

[notasheep]

Here, read this article on group dynamics and you'll understand why groups need leaders:

http://www.gmu.edu/student/csl/5stages.html

Article Text (don't give Dvorak a raise)

[generationxyu]

The weirdest thing I've seen lately has been the craziness provoked by a feud between tech writer Maureen O'Gara of LinuxGram/Linux Business News and her apparently bitter rival, blogger Pamela Jones (PJ) of Groklaw. It began some time back when the two exchanged barbs over intimations that Jones was somehow a stooge for IBM in the SCO-Linux battle and that O'Gara was somehow a stooge for SCO. You can see where this is headed.

So over the past week O'Gara tracked down and photographed PJ's home and PJ's mother's home and posted pics in her column, with veiled accusations that the entire Groklaw site is a front for IBM in its battle with SCO. Once this article appeared, all hell broke loose in the Linux community, with editors scrambling. There was removal of the offending article with apologies all around. Then came accusations of this and that; staffs of editors quitting in protest; publishers befuddled; veiled threats of lawsuits; vituperative attacks on multiple parties, including the LinuxWorld publisher, editors, O'Gara, and PJ; several worldwide denial-of-service attacks on LinuxWorld's parent company, Sys-Con Media; calls to Interpol; O'Gara's "firing"; and a flamestorm on Slashdot and elsewhere.

Oh, brother. In the olden days, O'Gara would have been given a medal for generating readership. But in today's world of the so easily offended, she's apparently let go instead, and things calm down as the hissy fit subsides.

Although her article was removed, you can usually find it on the Google cache (an interesting situation if you think about it), and I'm sure someone will mirror the piece eventually. Whatever the case, I've seen this feud become ridiculous and invasive, but I've seen worse on network TV with less-public figures than PJ. I would have paid no attention to the whole thing if I represented the collective thoughts of the Linux community. What difference does it make?

First let's get a few things straight. All of O'Gara's assertions are nutty. And I'm not talking about the yet-to-be-proven assertion that PJ is a 60-year-old dowager stooging for IBM. That's just ludicrous on the surface. Yet that is what is claimed.

First of all, IBM has lawyers, and it sure doesn't need to have someone find out via the discovery process that it's fronting a Web site about this case. That would simply never happen. Besides, IBM is not that clever. There are also enforced policies against this sort of thing.

It's wrong to assume that IBM expected the SCO battle to drag out like this from the outset. Unlikely! And I should mention that just because I, for example, developed an early timeline of the SCO history doesn't mean I'm a stooge for SCO or IBM either.

That said, the Linux community figures that O'Gara is being paid by SCO or Microsoft or someone bad. Again, if this were so, and if it was ever proven or stumbled on during the discovery process (nothing to take lightly), it would be a disaster for the litigation chances of the company doing the paying. It just wouldn't be worth the risk. It appears to me that O'Gara is just being overly provocative to get readers. And apparently it doesn't take much provocation, as the Linux community is slowly evolving into a state of mob rule, with the cheerleaders being paranoid crackpot leftovers from the waning days of Amiga. "Too nutty even for the Mac community? We welcome you!"

Now these lunatics are issuing death threats? I can tell you that my mere mentioning of any of this will result in incredibly hateful attempted postings on this forum and on my moderated blog. What is wrong with these people?

If anything is going to kill Linux and the open-source movement, it's the presence of certifiable lunatics in the ranks representing the users. It may be that this is actually a deep Astroturf PR campaign orchestrated by Microsoft to discredit open source and Linux. It sure seems like something weird is going on.

I can tell you this much: Normal people do not like being associated with fanatics and lunatics. Once Linux gets the image as the OS for the criminally insane, it's a dead duck. Unless the community gets a handle on this, grows up, and rebukes the extremists, the trash heap of history is where this is all headed.