Slashdot Mirror
Florian Mueller Outs Himself As Oracle Employee
eldavojohn writes "So you're commenting on your highly visible blog about patent case after patent case that deal with corporations battling over open source stuff, what does it matter if you're taking money from one and not the other? If you don't see any ethical problems with that, you might be Florian Mueller. Groklaw's PJ (who has been suspicious of Florian's ties to other giants like Microsoft for quite sometime) has noticed that Florian Mueller has decided to go full disclosure and admit that all his commentary on the Oracle v Google case might be tainted by his employment by Oracle. It seems he's got a bunch of consulting money coming his way from Oracle but I'm sure that won't undermine any of his assessments like Android licenses violate the GPL or that Oracle will win $6 billion from Google and Google was "at risk" of not settling despite the outcome that the charges later dropped to a small fraction of the $6 billion. Like so many other times, PJ's hunch was right."
I am constantly being accused of shilling for Microsoft on Slashdot just because I write that they do some good things. Seems like Mueller was accused for that too. Well, turns out that not true and these FOSS lunatics just make out some huge conspiracy theories how the whole world is against them.
And by the way, who should comment on these issues then? Someone who doesn't work in the industry and doesn't know anything about it? Yeah right. But of course it's bad when the comments contain something you don't agree with. For the free speech and freedom, yeah right!
Not to excuse Florian's earlier non-disclosure, but it's important to note that PJ has her own agenda and bias that influences Groklaw's coverage.
I'll give a shit about his employment when Slashdot and Groklaw stop kissing Google's ass.
All those people accusing half the internet of being paid shills have finally actually caught one. Even if it's a "stopped clock" moment, it fuels the fire.
Have you all so quickly forgotten when he got caught out in the bald-faced lies about secret requests to the EU competition commission to force Oracle to allow him & friends to take a fork of MySQL proprietary? He is not an honest person, and has demonstrated this clearly.
So an IBM employee who was blogging pro-IBM posts whines that an Oracle consultant blogs pro-Oracle posts? Pot calling the kettle black much?
He would be fired and escorted out of the building right about now. Since he's a "consultant" he will probably survive although I suspect his value as a shill for oracle has plummeted. Im wondering if the Cigarette industry needs a new spokesman or maybe OJ simpson?
Anyone can have an opinion. Muellers problem is he was getting paid for his opinions and didnt disclose that to his readers.
Mueller is _not_ an employee of Oracle. His post says "...Oracle has very recently become a consulting client of mine." He has many clients, of which Oracle is one. And saying that one consulting client amongst many is equivalent to employment is completely bogus.
I disagree with lots of the stuff he writes. But this headline is just intellectually dishonest slander. And for the record his writings are certainly no more slanted - or frankly bogus - than PJs.
I don't know why this surprises anybody. And that bias leaks into their news reports, even if the bias is as simple as not covering a candidate (showing images of Gingrich, Santorum, Romney, but not Ron Paul (who?)) or not covering an issue (repeal of right to trial under the NDAA if you are suspected terrorist*). FOX, NBC, CNN, radio news, online blogs... all have bias. It's just a matter of uncovering that bias. FOX=republican; NBC/CNN/CBS/ABC/PBS/NPR=democrat; talk radio=conservative; blogs reflect the views of the owner.
*
* suspected terrorist - As defined by the FBI is almost anyone. Pay with cash? Hide your phone from view when texting? Have a liberty/freedom-oriented bumper sticker? Own a gun, stunner, or can of mace? Et cetera.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
There really is not much difference in ethics or morals of McNealy, Ellison, Gates, Balmer, etc.. They are all scum.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
An individual who provides labor to a company or another person.
FFS, people, just because you're a "consultant" in title doesn't make you above the definition of words.
FM has also been extremely vocal about vp8/webm. While I'm the format certainly has its problems, both technical and legal, I can't help but believe the slow advance of the project is at least partly because a supposed expert on open source spent a lot of his time ranting about it.
I am far from unbiased on the situation since the I feel an unencumbered video codec would make the world a better place. Even knowing my bias, I can't help but be really upset at this revelation. On the other hand all's fair in love & war, so Oracle has a right to hire a shill to promote their agenda.
Maybe the real culprit in this is the wider web's need to have an expert, even a self proclaimed one, tell people what to do so they don't have to do all the work to find the truth themselves.
Maybe if people stop paying attention to him, he'll go away? LET'S FIND OUT!
Rob Enderle, he may be a weenie but someone can be a weenie without being a shill. Enderle was never paid by SCO for his opinions he was given bogus information and based his flawed opinions on that infomation, and he admits that some of his opinions about open source were wrong. He actually likes BSD...who knew?
http://www.tgdaily.com/software-opinion/34004-sco-linux-and-rob-enderle-a-conclusion
The fact that he works for Oracle doesn't prove his arguments are wrong. Attacking the person, not the logic, is a well-known logical fallacy: argumentum ad hominem. All his employment provides us is some additional perspective on where he's coming from. We still need to listen to what he actually has to say.
And, by the way, EVERYBODY who works "gets paid", that doesn't make us all "biased".
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
There is some difference between a contractor and an employee. I don't think it makes any difference ethically, but it makes a bit of a difference in the quality of a slashdot story.
The disturbing thing is not this revelation itself, which would not surprise anyone who regularly reads his blog. It is the most logical thing that a paid consultant/analyst is being paid by the two companies he just happens to favour enormously in his posts.
The disturbing thing is how his comments are reproduced verbatim by the big shots of the tech-news industry like ZDNet, PC Magazine etc, but also mainstream sources which are normally known as the last bastions of real journalism like the BBC, LA Times, Reuters etc.
Thankfully now sites like Ars Technica and The Verge have stepped up their coverage of patent disputes, so he is not the only voice.
At first it may seem that Florian Mueller doesn't pretend to be a journalist or unbiased and it's everyone else's fault for assuming he is. However, not only does he make repeated claims of being unbiased and neutral in his writing, he routinely emails his blog articles to all news sources he can think of (which is why he is so widely quoted and Groklaw is not).
Don't believe me? Just search for Florian+Oracle or Florian+Google on Google News and see the who's who of journalism pop up with his quotes.
By ENGLISH definition of the word, a consultant is a member of a set of all employees. It was never said that "employee" == "consultant" but it was said that "all consultants are employees." The piece that is missing is that the reverse is not true: "all employees are consultants." In the English definition of those words, a consultant is a special kind of employee. If you drew a Venn diagram, consultants would be a small circle inside the bigger circle of employees.
This "I'm special, I'm a consultant, I'm self employed, I have my own small business, I'm good for the economy" bullshit needs to stop.
Back in 2004 Florian Muller was very active in protesting against the proposed EU directive to require all member states to recognize software patents. There are some people that gained a positive impression of him based on that, and continue to quote him despite the fact that his recent "patent analysis" is heavily biased and legally unfounded more often than not. As an example, Ryan Paul, the writer and editor of the Open Source section of Arstechnica, continues to cite of Muller, and refuses to accept arguments that he is now a shrill.
We shouldn't read Florian Mueller because he takes money from Oracle. OK. Does that mean that we shouldn't listen to the FSF and Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society because they take money from Google?
What do you mean, the big boys shell out a lot of bucks for astroturfing and posting under false premises? Tell me it ain't so!
Check your premises.
But when is Slashdot's very own APK going out himself an the hosts file employee?
Confirmation makes the comments in this thread from January of last year a lot more entertaining.
What Apple did to Pystar was the same as what SCO did to IBM. But for Pystar, it was "Well, you just have to fight it in court". For SCO, it was "a scumbag move".
PJ's hunch about Mueller carried as much weight as SCO's hunch about PJ. Now that there's proof, it sounds a little less like smearing.
But Florian says he is squeaky clean. In his "about me" section on the blog he has the following statement....
"(In order to avoid conflicts of interest, Florian does not hold or initiate transactions in any technology stocks or derivatives thereof.)" So, owning stocks in companies he covers (either directly or through something like a mutual fund) might lead to a "conflict of interest" but being paid directly by them doesn't - Interesting....
Common shorthand. Also descriptive.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The JVM is designed to abstract the hardware and it was neither the first nor the best VM.
It is trivial to replace it.
Google can even translate JVM 'binaries' automatically - developers won't even have to recompile.
While we're at it, Java is a terribly wasteful language with endless boilerplate code wasting developers time and crazy, crazy RAM consumption. Often using 100s of times the RAM as C implimentations.
Remind me: Florian is the lifestyle coach having a secret affair with the deputy mayor, right?
I thought Niko already outed him.
Does anyone actually know what his training or education background is? I don't think there was never any doubt that he was paid to slander open source software, but I've always wondered if he was one person or an outfit of people, and why he was so often quoted as an "expert" and "consultant" in software patent disputes. Is he a licensed attorney or software engineer, or just a journalist with an interest in this stuff?
Google should sue Florian Mueller for Damages, since he and his owner Larry were at the center of a disingformation campaign.
And we as consumers and FOSS users too.
R
Ditto.
So a blogger has revealed that he has business interests with people that he writes about? OMFG! Burn him!
And while you're at it, throw in half of the tech blogging community.
PJ noticed that Mueller "outed himself" in a disclosure statement he made. That's some crack investigative work there.
"His consulting services are available directly (contact form, LinkedIn profile) as well as through two primary research firms (Gerson Lehrman Group, Coleman Research Group) serving the financial community. (In order to avoid conflicts of interest, Florian does not hold or initiate transactions in any technology stocks or derivatives thereof.)"
So the fact that he's doing consulting work for Oracle is shocking...how?