Published at LXer:

Forbes writer does post-mortem on his SCO coverage: "Online publications don't typically ask for follow-throughs. But I need to write one. ... I got it wrong. The nerds got it right." A nice read and, oddly, not for "I told you so" reasons. Lyons is fessing up to being suckered. Gotta like that in a journalist. Wish we saw more of it.

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There are good lessons in the mea culpa written.

1. how easily one can be snowed by large companies and their advertising dollar
2. how easy it is to get carried away when partisan - lets keep a calm-reasoned tone when dealing with our detractors huh? We've got the moral high-ground already.

It was an interesting point that Caldera (before being absorbed into SCO) had succeeded in a similar approach against MS re DOS. In fact, the process is uncannily similar... Caldera acquires DR-DOS then sues MS for antitrust involving actions taken by MS before Caldera even existed. SCO acquires UNIXWare etc

The lawsuits eventually failed because they ran out of money. Something that, no doubt, the FUD mills will spin out to mean that SCO were not wrong - just broke. That Novell used a dirty trick to get to a victory. IBM never proved their case (I know - they were defendants - they don't have to.) And so on.

Curiously, it seems that SCO had good reason to believe they owned the properties in question. In fact, the purchase was so convoluted that it took the lawsuit to clear it up. In retrospect, it looks like the buyer intended to end up owning the properties and the seller had no intention of parting with them. Beware of convoluted documents.

Otherwise, this was the best possible result for Linux and the best for the industry. SCO never owned the copyrights or patents they were protesting, the protagonists got a public airing of their different positions which saw judical favor in the open-source direction. The industry as a whole is better off without large companies using lawsuits to make money.

FS/OSS seems to be very strong in court. Judges want to rule in our favor if they can. Participants cannot be bought - it's a kind of enforced honesty - look at what happened in Europe... MS were able to buy off most of their opponents.

BTW: I love redhat's report to their judge on this... you can just hear the party in the next room. (It's lawyer-ese for "nyah nyah nyah nyah".)

Simon, Simon, Simon.
How easy it is to be snowed by large companies with lots of money?
Dan Lyons "mea culpa" is so nice and humble when taken by itself.

But consider this is the same Dan Lyons that is also the Fake Steve Jobs...

...the same Dan Lyons that says how terrible blogs are...

...while using his own to pursue his agenda...

...and various oddball articles that would be somewhat contrary to his supposed "mea culpa".

Dan Lyons "mea culpa" deserves no serious consideration.

OK - I didn't look too closely. However, I was trying to be careful that I did not actually accept the excuses offered. I still think there are good points. I still think the points I've taken are ot entirely central to what was written or the intent.

One needs to look at what large companies say in terms of their marketing benefit. The scope of marketing extends to paid endorsements in unusual places - especially people who don't want to look "bought".

Dan's mea culpa is a sop to the open source community - but he has to make it a passable sop. He is correct to be critical of the cultish appearance of the community, we do need to watch it. Of course - he opens himself to hypocrisy charges by doing the same. He shows his colors in statements like ... yeah, us linuxers are a bunch of unruly cultists all right, harrassing a poor journalist.

And on and on... I'd just like to focus on what we can get out of this. We don't have to accept the excuses to draw from what is said.

Dan's coverage was mixed... sometimes a neutral report was forced out of him:
http://www.forbes.com/technology/200...r_1012sco.html
... and the culpa only refers to his stuff in Forbes.


Another snow job, perhaps, would be the infamous MS/Novell deal ... repeated, somewhat, with others. The deal wasn't such a bad idea except that it was made with MS ... who are primarily a marketing company. Naturally the loudest voice goes...

OSDL correctly avoided this issue awhile ago.

During Software Freedom day, the MS voice (around here) was conspicuous amongst the people who had questions (beyond "what the ... ?"). An evening with GTF was quite useful.