Re: Nasty Rumors

[Joe Brenner <doom kzsu Stanford EDU>]

UNIXMAN <jzygmont alpha confederationc on ca> wrote:

> On Fri, 21 May 1999, John L Meyer wrote:
> 
> > Plus, I would fail to see the relavance of this.  Of course, this might be
> > an early shot by the "Target Linux" group Microsoft has formed.
> 
> This is only the beginning.  I'm willing to bet that we're going to see a 
> lot worse from microsoft in the future, and if they win the court case 
> - bend over.  Maybe this will make microsoft more revealing to linux 
> users who feel neutral about Big Brother.

Before we all go off on a descent into dueling paranoia,
allow me to state that I am not now, nor have I ever been,
an employee of Microsoft.  Nor a contractor.  Well, I guess
I've worked for companies that were connected to them, but
the tentacles of the beast are difficult to avoid.

Of course, you can, if you like, postulate that I've been
duped by MS plants in the Bay Area Linux community.  Or you
can just assume that I'm lying ("... isn't this just what
one of THEM would say?").

Personally, I think if Microsoft started a smear campaign
this slimy, that would be a positive sign... there's a good
chance they'd screw it up, we could trace it back to them,
and the whole thing would back-fire. 

As for the original rumors: I had the impression that the
reason that the original story about Redhat vs Linuxcare's
advertising was pulled from slashdot was because of some
sort of legal threat from Redhat.  Actually it looks like it
was a mysql burp of some sort (and it makes me think I'm
doing the right thing, since I'm currently looking into
postgresql).  So the fear that I had that Redhat was going
beserk with it's lawyers seems unfounded... Linuxcare
genuinely was pushing it by using a photo of Redhat 6.0 in
an ad (and the only defense that they have is that they
tried to inform Redhat about it before hand but didn't hear
back from them).

As for the second rumor, there's something weird going on
there.  Redhat says that they got rid of the guy, but a
bunch of people say that he was at LinuxExpo, tagged as a
Redhat employee, so what's up?  The anti-RH folks want to
believe that RH is lying, but it occurs to me that if the
guy is really that big a jerk, he probably could have
snagged a ribbon from somewhere (and typically conferences
just take your word for it when you tell them what company
name you want to put on your badge). 

(Would it help if I said that despite the fact that I might
be helping to transmit some stupid rumors, I'm actually of
the opinion that Redhat is far more of a white hat than a
black hat?  I just want it to stay that way.)