roughlydrafted is reviewing some history as background on the recent
revelations about Daniel Lyons and his anti-Linux campaign. Story is
also linked to SCO, Microsoft, and other players. Second part of a
series...
<Quote>
[continued from part one: Daniel Lyons: Fake Steve Jobs and the SCO
Shill Who Hated Linux]
[historical context important for understanding SCO case...]
[lots of misleading information because lots of money involved...]
[Lyons and Enderle worked together on anti-Linux crusade...]
They frequently wrote not only about how doomed Linux itself was, but
also how delusional its supporters were. Their joint crusade against
Linux frequently cited each other's comments.
In a Forbes article entitled "Revenge of the Nerds," Lyons scoured
Internet message boards to find sensationalist comments from readers
supporting Linux, framing them to suggest anyone interested in Linux
was insane. Lyons added, "Robert Enderle, an analyst who believes
SCO's claims might be legitimate, says he and others also have been
threatened, and says this 'techno-insanity' verges on terrorism."
Shortly afterward Enderle, in a rambling screed against Linux,
referred to Lyons' article as an "expose," that "pointed out that a
large number of Linux advocates don't appear to actually use the
product," a statement never even suggested by Lyons in his article.
Enderle and Lyons cross-linked each other on Linux and SCO, with
Enderle specializing in his anti-Linux Windows Enthusiasm and Lyons
seeking to brand Linux users as both independent ragtag crazies and,
at the same time, an organized posse of anti-SCO propagandists
supported in a secret astroturf campaign by IBM.
Attacking and Marginalizing Dissenting Opinion.
Lyons' sarcastically negative view of the Linux community was served
up in piles of articles in the pages of Forbes, and even exuded
through his blog caricature of Steve Jobs. Why made bashing Linux so
important?
Linux users--like Mac users--were watching their platform of choice
struggle in competition against Microsoft's entrenched monopoly
position. False information, or bits of truth dispersed in an unfairly
negative spin, actually caused real damage to their efforts, causing
them to passionately defend the truth. Lyons, Enderle and others would
then twist users' defenses into fanaticism and mock their sincerity.
[sounds just like the wintrolls!]
Lyons was particularly effective at asking leading questions that
could extract a story of his own making. While reviling bloggers as
"online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and
invective," Lyons' own column in Forbes really did the same; he simply
targeted a subject he though was too enfeebled to survive or fight
back in a meaningful way...
Lyons says characterizing him as a "Linux hater" for his past
reporting is unfair, maintaining that he has used Linux for years and
that he has reported favorably on Linux when he had a reason do to
so....
[who does that remind you of?]
Lyons described own version of the events involving SCO, explaining,
"In 1996, SCO's predecessor company, Caldera, bought the rights to a
decrepit version of the DOS operating system and used it to sue
Microsoft, eventually shaking a settlement out of the Redmond, Wash.,
software giant."
Since Caldera later acquired and then became SCO, Lyons decided the
same thing would happen again, except this time the loser would be
Linux. This seemed even more likely because in 2002, SCO had picked up
a litigious new CEO in the form of Darl McBride.
Lyons thought that if Caldera had already won big money from
Microsoft, its new incarnation as SCO--led by a complete shyster of a
new executive--would have no problem raping the big companies that had
thrown their support behind Linux, starting with IBM....
Why Lyons Was Wrong: the Origins of Microsoft.
The problem was that Lyons' version of history was a gross
oversimplification. Caldera didn't merely buy up an ancient version of
DOS and form it into a tool to use against Microsoft.
That "decrepit version of DOS" was DR-DOS, developed by Digital
Research.
[history going back to CP/M...involvement of Gates and Allen...]
IBM's business was in mainframes and minicomputers. When it entered
the PC business in 1981, it partnered with Microsoft to quickly
deliver a low end system that was really designed to stave off a
migration to PCs.
[more about IBM's intentions...]
Microsoft's first attempt to license software for resale hadn't been
very successful. In 1979, Microsoft licensed AT&T's V7 Unix, paired it
with code from BSD, and resold it under the name Xenix. After that
plan failed, Gates and Allen decided that rather than simply licensing
CP/M from Digital Research and trying to resell it, they could make
far more money selling a knock off copy of CP/M.
Microsoft lined up a sweet deal in 1981 to buy the rights to QDOS, an
unauthorized clone of CP/M written by Seattle Software Works....
Microsoft's DOS clearly lifted large portions of its functionality
directly from CP/M. However, at the time there was little concept of
software patents in the rapidly emerging desktop computing market, and
even the idea of software copyright was loosely defined.
Unlike business users, casual desktop users commonly didn't perceive
value in software, and saw little problem in copying it. Microsoft's
Gates wanted to change that; he also argued against the developing
idea of free software, despite the fact that the DOS software he was
selling was itself an unauthorized copy.
As its fortunes began to take off with IBM's PC, Microsoft also worked
diligently to shut Digital Research out of the very market it had
created with CP/M. While Digital Research tried to sell its original
version for IBM's PC as a product called CP/M-86, Microsoft was able
to deeply discount its DOS and compete on price because it had spent
very little to acquire its copy.
[next: things really get going in the 1980s]
</Quote>
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q3.07/RDM.Tech.Q3.07.html
|
|
