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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. '"
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.
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.
Early in the SCO saga, Forbes magazine essentially swallowed the story that Linux was pwn3d by SCO through direct copying, derivative works, etc. Dan Lyons was the man behind the pen at Forbes. Of course the concept of value addition without $$$ was foreign to Forbes, so it made sense in their little world that Linux must be stolen. Dan and PJ from Groklaw.net said some less than flattering things about each other, and the rest is history.
Lyons did eventually apologize.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
For those of us who aren't omnipotent, who is this guy?
Heck, even those of us who are omnipotent haven't heard of this guy. That's how important he is!
May we live long and die out
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.
Yup. LAMP on the servers, OS X on the dev box, Windows on the fun box (with all my favorite PC games installed). Windows is on the dev box too, although usually running under Parallels, and generally not that often. For various reasons, I happen to like all three operating systems. I've never understood why liking one of them is supposed to make me hate one or both of the other two. Nor do I want some uber-system that would supposedly take the best of all three and give me everything I want in one package. People don't understand that there are trade-offs in any design, and no matter which way you go, it'll make it better in some situations and worse in others. There is not and never can be a single OS that works best for all people in all situations. Better to have diversity, and use the best tool for each task at hand.
Incidentally, this makes for a quick and easy touchstone for judging someone's intelligence and reasonability. Ask them, "What's the best X?" If they answer with anything other than a question, "Best for what?", they're probably an unintelligent or unreasoning zealot of some sort or another. The question itself is nonsensical -- without defining "at what", the term "best" makes no sense. The fact that the question makes sense to them and that they even have an answer is a sign of muddled thinking.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."