Daniel Lyons of Forbes Admits Being Snowed by SCO

certain death writes "Daniel Lyons of Forbes Magazine has admitted to being snowed by SCO, regarding their lawsuit over Linux and SCO code. He specifically mentions Groklaw's role in the case, and regrets his early articles giving the company the benefit of the doubt. 'I still thought it would be foolish to predict how this lawsuit (or any lawsuit) would play out. I even wrote an article called "Revenge of the Nerds," which poked fun at the pack of amateur sleuths who were following the case on a Web site called Groklaw and who claimed to know for sure that SCO was going to lose. Turns out those amateur sleuths were right. Now some of them are writing to me asking how I'd like my crow cooked, and where I'd like it delivered. Others in that highly partisan crowd have suggested that I wanted SCO to win, and even that I was paid off by SCO or Microsoft. Of course that's not true. I've told these folks it's not true. Hasn't stopped them. The truth, as is often the case, is far less exciting than the conspiracy theorists would like to believe. It is simply this: I got it wrong. The nerds got it right.'"

Comments

Thank you, Daniel

[Iphtashu Fitz]

It's nice to see at least some journalists out there in this day and age are willing to publicly admit when they are wrong.

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[arth1]

Um, why? It's not like he could deny it...

And his rudeness in persisting to call those who were right "nerds" says a lot more.

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[MightyMartian]

Except that it has nothing to do with "nerds" or "amateur sleuths". It had to do with people who knew Unix, knew its history, knew how systems like Linux and Minix were developed, and laid out the facts. It was skunky little financial journalists who, whether paid shills or not, chose to believe the unsubstantiated claims of McBride and SCO's lawyers, who, from the very beginning, refused to question the fact that these guys were never willing to actually demonstrates alleged infringements, and who got capital to fund their lawsuit in mysterious ways.

Perhaps in the future these fine financial journalists, when dealing with matters surrounding technology, should do their fucking jobs and talk to the actual fucking people who know about the fucking technology, as opposed to a pack of fucking litigous bastards whose business model amounted to extorting licensing fees.

I don't think any better of this piece of Wallstreet crapola than I did ten minutes ago. It's impossible now for him to defend his indefensible position, so why the fuck should anyone give him the time of day on it.

Makes you wonder just how lacking in due dilligence and basic investigative techniques this particular cadre of journalists are. Okay, they're not liars. They're just fucking retards.

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[MightyMartian]

As I said in another post, reporters don't have to be maritime engineers to report on ships sinking. This reporter works for Forbes, so I wouldn't expect him to know anything about the history of Unix. However, when the note crosses his desk talking about SCOX suing IBM over allegations that SCO's copyrighted Unix code leaking into Linux via AIX, he should do his utmost to learn about these things called Unix, Linux and AIX. That's his job. The fact was that he, like a lot of the Wall Street crowd, don't like open source, and so, rather than being a reporter, he became nothing more than a shill. If he was too stupid to even bother getting paid by SCO, then I'd say that's even more points against him, because if you're going to be a biased prick, then at least be a corrupt biased prick.

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[Em Adespoton]

I give him kudos for admitting he was wrong; I give him a tsk tsk for the way in which he did it. He labels the group at Groklaw as "amateur sleuths" which, in my book, implies that he is a professional sleuth. Why, then, did the "amateur sleuths" who are a collection of individuals, ranging from slashdot geeks in basements through to paralegals, lawyers, software architects, engineers, and probably even a few journalists and PIs, do due dilligence, while he plainly states that he did not?

I have to admit that I stopped thinking of him as a viable journalist shortly after he started covering this case. In his article, he mentions that he based his writing on what SCO told him, and that he'd been burned once before by not bothering to cover the whole DOS lawsuit. If I had been in his shoes, I would have immediately done a search on Unix, and found out about the BSD/AT&T lawsuit, and how that turned out. At which point, I would have (had I not already known anything about the situation) thought, "Hmm. Sounds like there might be another side to this story," and, being a technical journalist for a financial rag, used my contacts at, say, IBM, or even some uninvolved third party like Red Hat or Novell to try and get a full picture before reporting.

Corporate Feed Reporting has got so bad nowadays that unless I see evidence in the first paragraph of an article that it is either an opinion piece, or that the reporter has consulted multiple parties, not just copied and pasted some text out of some document provided to them by some other party, I just skip over the rest of the article and do a search on the topic for an article that at least clings to a shred of journalistic integrity.

An idea I came up with after reading this yesterday:
Why not apply a rating system to journalists similar to that being used on Wikipedia by the UCSC crew? A journalist's rating is affected by whether they follow journalistic procedures in their writing, who they sell their article to (separate rating system for publishers based on the ratings of journalists who publish throgh them), accuracy of factual reporting, whether they include large blocks of text found to be non original, etc.

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[MightyMartian]

I suppose bitter describes it. His pat apology with its backhanded insults doesn't cut the mustard with me. When he publicly admits "I failed as a journalist. I was not reporting in an unbiased fashion and never even bothered to ask some of the guys who were deeply involved in Unix since the olden days, or some of the guys like Linus Torvalds who develop and maintain the kernel."

Now that would be an apology. This "nerds" and "amateur sleuths" isn't an apology, it's an insult and an indication that he probably doesn't even know how he went wrong.

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[Penguinisto]

Not so sure... GP phrased it wrong, but the point is still there: most folks figured that SCO was wrong a long, long time before Lyons gave up defending them. They also refrained from belittling those who sought the truth, such as Groklaw.

If someone changes their mind, cool - esp. if someone changes it after careful consideration. But after their pet theory/ideology/etc gets squashed like a SCO's bug on IBM's windshield, and after so vehemently defending the likes of McBride & co.? Sure, he hedged his bets after awhile - all pros do that.

IMHO, I can understand what the guy is feeling. His call was bad, his credibility on the matter is toast, and he probably didn't enjoy having to write that. I will further give him at least the props for loyalty to his ideas and prognostications (then again, it isn't like he could magically change them and think no one would notice, either).

That said, his behavior was quite crass, somewhat elitist, and quite frankly, he gets what he gives, y'know?

/P

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[glwtta]

And his rudeness in persisting to call those who were right "nerds" says a lot more.

I keep reading these comments in the thread - since when did "nerd" become and actual, serious insult? Did we have to trade it to the PC Police to get "black" back a couple of years ago, or something?

Lighten up. Personally I prefer "geek" (mostly because it's more accurate), but anyone who has strong feelings about the technical merits of "SCO vs The World" is, by definition, a nerd.

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[Seumas]

I don't understand how a JOURNALIST can get snowed by a company like SCO in the first place. Whatever happened to educating yourself, conducting some degree of investigation and then reporting? How is taking what the subject of your reporting says to you as gospel journalism, in any remote way? What is this guy -- Larry King?

Also, how does a guy who writes articles in a financial magazine about lawsuits get off calling *anyone* nerds?!

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[chartreuse]

Remember, this guy also wrote the Forbes cover story claiming blogs were "an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective", then turned around and started the Fake Steve Jobs blog.

Another triumph for consistency.

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[cduffy]

Sure you want to get into that battle?

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[ti1ion]

I think you are going to have to come up with some proof of your assertions about Groklaw and your claim of false "facts."

I began reading Groklaw not long after the suit was filed. Someone on Slashdot mentioned it and I checked it out. What I found was that PJ asked the same question everyone else was asking: where is the code? Some things in the initial filing by SCO were just silly, like the whole "Linux was a bicycle and IBM stole our code to make it a Cadillac" bit. PJ objected to it, as did others. The problem was that SCO never provided any real evidence. When SCO's lawyers made assertions that were wrong, Groklaw corrected them. PJ and others dug up information and discussed how relevant it was to the case. I would agree that for a while PJ's personal comments became a little tiring, so I skipped them. But, it is rather understandable when she was being personally attacked by not only SCO and their lawyers, but also by Lyons and other journalists who could not stand being called out for their "press-release reporting."

So, please show me where (and since you say it was frequent you should have no trouble there) false "facts" were presented.

Re:Thank you, Daniel

[CmdrTaco]

Pwnz3d.

What about the attitude?

[irtza]

Its one thing to admit your wrong. This may redeam character but not credibility. With a history of being wrong and smearing those with a different view, he sets a precedent as being an unreliable news source and despite whatever appologies are given - a liability to Forbes as a trustworthy news source. He would have to work to regain credibility with people checking the facts against what he said. It would be easier to just move to another source of information. If this is merely an attempt to regain face in the journalist world, it will fall flat with any critical thinker

One step further, for someone writing on the technology field - it doesn't serve his purpose to put out condescending statements like "the nerds got it right".

Re:He's only...

[Frosty Piss]

I wonder about the investors who will now lose pretty well everything they banked on the crapshoot.

They knew the rules, they gambled and lost. Had they done even the weakest analysis of the SCO case, they would have passed. Such is life for those that wish to play that game.

Then there's also the poor employees who will undoubtably suffer as they seek employment elsewhere.

Any of their employees that didn't have a vested interest are already gone. Those that are still around have profited very well indeed by sucking the life out of SCO and shilling for Microsoft. They have been well compensated and will move on to the next scheme. Perhaps they can find employment in the Patent Troll industry.

So a journo got it wrong, not like he's Dan Rather being lead down the garden path and left there by CBS researchers and management.

Yes, and now he wants to redeem himself and hope everyone forgets that he trashed Groklaw and the Open Source Movement. I have no sympathy for him anymore than I will when Laura Didio admits she was wrong.

Re:RTFA

[MightyMartian]

With only about seven posts up so far on Slashdot I've already seen a couple that snipe at him for IMHO unfair reasons. He's a reporter, not a computer expert, and he was fooled by some slick con artists. Don't hold him to an unreasonable standard, unless you have never ever been wrong about anything yourself.

That's right. He's a reporter. And a reporter doesn't have to be a goddamn expert on aeronautics to report on a jet crash, or an expert on maritime engineering to report on a ship sinking. Neither does a reporter have to be a kernel programmer to report on a company claiming they were ripped off by Linus Torvalds and other Linux kernel developers. In all causes, a journalist is supposed to check his sources, supposed to talk to both sides, supposed to, through the process of investigation, become something of an expert. He doesn't need to know jack-shit about fork(), but he should know something about the history of Unix. With that kind of knowledge, he would have soon enough realized that there was a con going on. SCO wasn't slick. They weren't clever at all. If some "amateur sleuths" could recognize right from the word "go" that this was a scam, then that suggests that he's just an idiot, and the question becomes what is Forbes doing paying idiots?

The apology comes to late. If this guy, and his fellow SCO-whores had been doing their jobs, investor money might have been saved and a stock scam might have been prevented. All it would have required was making some phone calls to guys like Linus to get the scoop.

This guy, and all his cohorts, are shameful embarassments. They should be fired, not given kudos because, after the fucking company they were giving editorial blowjobs to has crashed and burned, they're shamed into admitting how stupid they were.

No, it's not.

[FatSean]

If I've learned anything from recent Presidential elections, changing your opinions due to new information is a sign of weakness. One must make a choice and ride it all the way down.

Re:No, it's not.

[Rary]

"If I've learned anything from recent Presidential elections, changing your opinions due to new information is a sign of weakness. One must make a choice and ride it all the way down."

At the time of this posting, you've been modded +5, Funny. The sad part, though, is that what you say is absolutely true, and not just of American politics. It's certainly true up here in Canada, as well. If a politician sticks to his guns no matter what new information comes out, then they're seen as being decisive. If they change their minds, they're weak, wishy-washy, and clearly not leadership material.

Voters are, by and large, stupid.

Re:No, it's not.

[timeOday]

The problem is that they operate in a political realm where there are no objective assessments, where if you lose but spin it right, you win. So they campaign and make decisions based on propaganda. But then they make some real decision with real consequences (like starting a war or handling a natural disaster) and boom, reality asserts itself, and it hurts.

The clue that no "reporter" should have missed

[Antaeus Feldspar]

I'm sorry, but Lyons' portrayal of himself as an ordinary Joe who made a reasonable evaluation of the case which just happened to be wrong because SCO was keeping its deception so well-hidden is just plain wrong. There was at least one red flag which Lyons has no excuse for not catching.

That red flag was when SCO presented their excuse for not showing anyone (except under draconian NDAs) what the alleged copyright infringement actually consisted of. They didn't want that information getting to the Linux crew, they said, because that would allow them to remove the offending code.

That there is all you need to know to call "BS". It is your obligation to notify someone you suspect of infringing your copyright of just how you think they are infringing your copyright so that they can remedy the wrong. You cannot say "I would rather let them continue to infringe my copyright so I can soak them for more damages"; despite what SCO might have you believe, that is not the purpose of copyright law. As for the idea that the offending code would be scrubbed from the record in order to hide the evidence of past infringement, again, that's BS. If there was copied code in the kernel, as SCO assured us there was, SCO could have downloaded copies of the kernel twice a day to have a historical record of the violation.

Lyons still refers to "amateur sleuths" as though he's some kind of professional. What sort of "professional" doesn't investigate the most glaring contradiction between what someone claims they want and what they're actually trying to arrange?