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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

One thing that had me wondering last week, as the blogging conflict between Sun and the coopetition made their way through the media was: who profits from it?

When you look at the speculation around the OOo status after the publication of the Microsoft agreement, for example, and step back from the context of the current shouting match between Sun and, among others, Red Hat, who is the one that actually profits from casting doubt around the future of OpenOffice.org? Not Red Hat or Novell, as they ship it, and have a few hackers of their own working on it. Not Sun, obviously, as they are the driving force behind OOo, and are doing a very good job on it. Neither IBM, HP, nor Apple have products competing with OOo, and for some of them OOo is the leading full-featured office suite on their platforms so their interest in fudding it is questionable.

The only company that profits from someone throwing mud on OOo is Microsoft.

When you step out of the context of the current shouting match on street credibility between GNU/Linux vendors, who is the company that profits from GNU/Linux vendors throwing mud upon each other? If the mud that sticks turns out to be something along the lines of 'Red Hat is a bunch of greedy, incompetent, secret customer lock-in fanatics that siphoon off free labor, Sun is a bunch of greedy flip-flopping pseudo-open Microsoft pawns, IBM is a bunch of greedy Java-robbing thieves that publicly pretend to be golden Linux boys while sharpening the knives for Red Hat and Novell' then that leaves one company with a lot of free, negative advertising for their own product line over the apparently equally evil competition.

Why invest in GNU/Linux when all the vendors do their best to mutually assure you that they are all just a bunch of greedy would-be-Microsofts out there looking for ways to lock-in and milk the customer? You might as well buy the real thing for less if you have to pay the 'lock-in' tax anyway [1].

I have no idea if Microsoft is really framing the current debates in the community. But when you look around the accusations being thrown around, the only company that seems to profit from the aura of uncertainity being fabricated around GNU/Linux, OpenOffice.org or Java is the convicted monopolist with a lot of experience in astroturfing and FUD.

The higher art of trolling is not to postulate that 'Al Gore is a liar'. It is to ask seemingly innocent questions like 'Is Al Gore a liar?' and spice them up with a few quotes out of context, in order to get people to waste their time discussing that question. If a troll is a good one, he'll add some oil into the fire, by later asking questions like 'Did Al Gore really invent the internet?'. It's easy to draw the parallels to the current debates around Sun in the community.

I'd say the GNU/Linux community[2] is getting trolled big time in the media. The pattern seems to be to troll Sun to elicit an energetic response, then to spoonfeed the response to other GNU/Linux vendors to get them to bash Sun, and then to continue in cricles till the flames fan out.

As long as Sun's PR leaves something about their commitment to the communities open to interpretation, the trolls will try to take shots on Sun about it.

Don't feed the trolls.

cheers,
dalibor topic

[1] The 'less' referes to Microsoft's TCO marketing campaign.
[2] Which obviously includes Sun.
 

Great comments, Dalibor, I wish more people in the F/OSS would see them - isn't it about time you started your own blog? I especially appreciatethe widely neglected observation that Sun is as much a part of the F/OSS community and the GNU/Linux community as any other company.
 

I think this framing is exactly what has happened to Sun. It's a real shame that the company which gave us NFS and a boatload of other cool technologies (without which the Linux "revolution" could never have taken off) is smeared as being anti-OSS. However, I think it has nothing to do with Microsoft. In the early nineties, the OSS community was hijacked by some religious zealots who believed that you either supported GPL exclusively or else you were anti-GPL. This was a rewrite of history, and Sun bears as much blame as anyone for letting this hijack happen. Personally I think Sun stayed out of this because Sun thought the Stallmanites would hurt Microsoft, and it backfired when it became clear that even Sun could not be pure enough for Stallman. The pragmatists still have not taken back the OSS community, although things have moved in that direction. But in the meantime, Linux is threatening Sun licenses far more than Windows, so the press naturally looks for Sun to do defensive things. And Sun obliges by cancelling projects, having executives that say things about Linux, and so on. As Linux is still largely religion, it is very difficult to straddle the fence. You have IBM sellings its soul on one side, and Microsoft opposing tooth and nail on the other (at least that's the perception/story). So people expect Sun to go one way or another. And you have to admit that Sun is not sold out like IBM did. But anyway, as I said, it is a shame that the whole OSS movement is defined as 'Linux' these days -- I think that the way Sun engaged before is a much better definition of OSS and community.
 

I am inclined to say... about time you woke up to this, but well done for doing so. Sun is pushing back though. i think your "Wall Street is buying Sun again" is a potentially strong frame. keep saying it no matter what HP, IBM or anyone else says, and the reality will stick.

i am not a blogger user but i am not anonymous either.

James Governor
http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor
 

Thanks for this artcle!
 

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

I know what you mean but unfortunatelly it is not usefull for me