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Rik van Riel: FUD counter
Oct 7, 1999, 16:38 UTC (11 Talkbacks) (Other stories by Rik van Riel)

Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 16:02:15 +0200 (CEST)
From: Rik van Riel riel@nl.linux.org
To: Linux Kernel

Hi,

After the recent FUD attacks (by SCO, Microsoft and others) where the "attackers" have resorted to outright lies and half-truths, it has become apparent that the Open Source community can simply counter such articles with friendly, well-worded responses that are purely based on easily verifyable facts.

It's also quite clear that there are several dozen people on these lists who like to spend time getting angry about the FUD attacks and sometimes writing down replies. This is not only inefficient, it also gets in the way of people who just want to code and now have to cope with extra traffic on the lists.

Putting one and one together, it would probably be best to set up a mailing list (and maybe later a web site) dedicated to setting straight the facts that were bent so horribly against us by marketing departments in various companies.

This not only gives us some sort of "marketing department" of our own, it also makes sure that the regular FUD attacks don't take time away from the developers. Of course, we cannot work like a "normal" marketing department. We do all of our work out in the open and, as such, are exposed to much more scrutiny than any commercial company could ever be. This means that we will have to limit our responses facts that are 100% true and easily verifyable. I suspect this will be easy and fun for most of us anyway, so I'll just stick to that rule :)

People wanting to join in the fud countering effort can join the fud-counter@nl.linux.org mailing list by sending a message to:
"majordomo@nl.linux.org"
with the following text in the body of the message:
"subscribe fud-counter"

And remember, from now on there's no reason to post fud alerts to linux-kernel, linux-future or any other of the development lists...

regards,

Rik
--
The Internet is not a network of computers. It is a network of people. That is its real strength.
--
work at: http://www.reseau.nl/
home at: http://www.nl.linux.org/~riel/

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Martin Hebrank: My take on the MS Linux Myths document (Oct 06, 1999)
LWN: A look at Microsoft's Linux Myths (Oct 06, 1999)
Martin Brooks: Response to Microsoft's Linux Myths Statement (Oct 06, 1999)
Microsoft.com: Linux Myths (Oct 05, 1999)

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