[advocacy-discuss] Any responses to this Infoworld Article ?

[Sriram Narayanan]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 8:02 PM, Simon Phipps <webmink at sun.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 28, 2008, at 15:16, Al Hopper wrote:
>
>> As the Sun Open Source Ombudsman, and the (approximate) organizational
>> counterpart to Zemlin, I think that you should pen a rebuttal and have
>> it published in the NY Times, Infoworld etc.
>
> I think there have been enough community members making statements for
> general consumption, and Sun's response ought to come from the
> business unit that staffs Opensolaris (of which I am no longer a part,
> having moved to a new corporate location a few months back). Of
> course, if they don't act I may well consider this, just not on Sun's
> behalf...
>

Wow, I've been busy helping withg a product release, and am pleased to
see so much happened during the past two days !:)

Simon: the original wordings of my post to advocacy-discuss was filled
with a lot of angst about Sun not being proactive in watching out and
targetting FUD. I however, reworded my message to be what I ended up
posting.

It is one thing to count on community based responses. But it is quite
another thing to remain sitting on one's hands while the competition
makes misleading statements and gets away with it. The statements by
the foundation that made those statements were misleading, and by not
issuing a retraction or public apology, that organization is standing
by him and his misleading statements - they are clearly endorsing this
campaign of FUD, dis information, and deliberate maligning of Sun and
OpenSolaris' name, credibility and technology.

Rather than wait for the community to prove how OpenSolaris can be
superior, it is time for Sun/The OpenSolaris Foundation to do so. That
one article has been read by thousands, and it will come up again and
again in google searches. The responses will be difficult to come up
in these searches as easily, and various marketing and advocacy teams
(Sun, OpenSolaris, community distros, community members) will have to
spend time repairing the damage by Zemlin.

I too do not favor an open war with the Linux Foundation (after all,
there is no permanent enemy and no permanent friend). But surely this
is the time to ensure that crooked messages by the competition are
responded to.

-- Sriram