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Forbes' Dan Lyons Hates Groklaw, Wants to Be BFF with Linux
Anastasia Beaverhousen writes "In what many will consider either a total change of heart (or complete BS), Forbes columnist Dan Lyons was caught on video by Linux.com (also owned by Sourceforge) at a recent conference professing his undying love for Linux. The words, "pry it out of my hands at gunpoint" were even used at one point. 'After wading though some of the Lyons vs. PJ mire while writing this brief piece, I found myself wondering, "Aren't we all supposed to be grown-up journalists, or bloggers, or whatever? Aren't Linux and Free Software supposed to be about love and harmony and making the world a better place? Can't we, please, smile on our brother, everybody love one another, right now?" In any case, old-hippie sentiments aside, Dan Lyons says that despite the many attacks on him as a supposedly anti-Linux attack dog, he loves Linux. And uses it. And that he has trouble understanding why anyone would think he doesn't love Linux. '"
Sure Dan, we love you too. Now, go fetch that Vista bone and Bill will give you a biscuit. Yeah, yeah, good boy.
For those of us who aren't omnipotent, who is this guy?
This guy loves Linux the same way a politician loves the media: It makes both an excellent tool for use, and an excellent target to attack in order to bolster one's own status. So, as long as he can play both sides, he gets to think of himself as the cleverest person who ever tricked a system into working for him.
In other words, just another self-deluded troll actively preying on his audience.
Just a wild guess, but maybe because we actually read his pieces parroting SCOX and attacking the Linux developer community?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
For several years, he was front and center in the SCO FUD campaign - on the wrong side.
His sudden "road to Damascus" moment is about as "convenient" as someone becoming a "born-again Christian" after being arrested.
Believe at your own risk.
The real story for those here who care to see it, is that there's a huge population of people for whom Linux is not mutually exclusive from Windows.
.Net, it's obvious that the LAM* stack is the best server-side technology, and just as obvious (in my personal case) that Windows is the best environment for my dev box.
People who can love linux without hating Microsoft. People who can objectively use the best tool for the job.
I'm a web developer. On any project save for
I believe that's how he characterized all Linux users.
Gotta love his lavish praise of "intrepid reporter" Maureen O'Gara. Dan just loved the way Maureen relentlessly stalked, and harassed, PJ and PJ's elderly mother. Especially the way Maureen bragged about obtaining, and researching PJ's private cell-phone records, and looking inside PJ's residence, and bashing PJ's religious beliefs. Maureen's action were so vile, that the entire editorial staff of linuxworld resigned in disgust. Dan loved it.
Don't forget about how Danny squealed like a stuck pig about bloggers, and message board posters, not giving their true identity, then he turns out to be the fake Steve Jobs.
Clearly, he misses the whole point, probably deliberately. Whether he personally likes Linux is meaningless. I don't dislike people for not liking Linux. People can hate Linux all they want, and they can say so, doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I think they sometimes make some good points. And, for all I care, people can hate groklaw, or PJ, as well.
My problem with Lyons is that he's a liar, a hypocrite, and a bully. For somebody who loves Linux so much, he was certainly quick to side with the company that was trying to destroy Linux, and to have a complete hissy-fit against who opposed the scam. And where are these 67 positive Linux articles? Is he sure it isn't more like one or two, writen after it was decided that scox doesn't even own UNIX? And where are his retractions and apologies after it turned out the PJ, and the message board posters were right all along? Why isn't he slamming scox and msft for the obvious scam?
Back when it was possible -- just barely -- for an intelligent person to think SCO might still have a case that they were just coincidentally showing no proof of, Dan Lyons was among those trying to portray SCO as in all likelihood a bunch of swell guys who had produced something of value, only to see it ripped off, and were now simply seeking just compensation for having been ripped off.
That in itself is proof of nothing except excessive credulity.
What makes Lyons a two-faced mealymouth is that in the same time period he wrote the infamous "Linux's Hit Men" article, in which he excoriated the Free Software Foundation for seeking compensation/compliance in cases where swell programmers had produced something of value and put it under the GPL only to see the fruits of their labors ripped off. The Foundation, Lyons tells the reader, "doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners ... maybe, as some suggest, the foundation wants GPL-covered code to creep into commercial products so it can use GPL to force open those products." Lyons' final line? "Such a pity, comrade."
So, let's sum up. When it's a commercial company which claims it has been ripped off (even if it's actively refusing to show anyone its evidence of the alleged ripoff under reasonable conditions) Lyons thinks it's perfectly okay for them to demand huge financial recompense. When it's open source coders that get ripped off, however, Lyons thinks it's pretty jerky for anyone to actually make the rippers-off comply with the license for the code they chose to use -- if not some sort of sinister conspiracy.
Gee, I can't think why anyone would doubt the sincerity of Lyons' love for Linux and open source.
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
No. That's bullshit. Anyone looking at SCO's financials would see that they were losing business back before they filed the suit.
Only an idiot would believe that story without checking ANY of the facts.
And that's exactly what Forbes and Lyons did. In fact, they did worse. They refused to check any of the facts and instead they parroted, as if they were fact, the unsubstantiated lies that SCO kept spewing.