Rob Enderle again

Rob is writing about the power of Linux at The Most Powerful Labor Union in the World: Linux?

He tells the story of an article by Maureen O'Gara being censored and removed because it painted a negative picture of Groklaw. I certainly agree with his contention that Linux fans are a powerful force, and I agree that it's disgusting that an article would be pulled because of backlash from the community.

However, Rob didn't bother to note Maureen's history with the Linux community: she's been seen as anti-Linux for a long time now, and Linux folk suspect her of being a paid shill (Microsoft? SCO?). Rob also forgets that the Linux community didn't rip the article out themselves; that choice was made by the publisher. In other words, shame on them. Rob also implies that Linux pressure is responsible for that publisher's general troubles; but anyone familiar with their various magazines could tell you that they were already well on their way to irrelevancy.

In another part of this article, Rob blames the Linux community for SCO's near demise. That's utter nonsense: SCO made its own bed, and was heading down the path to unimportance before the first line of Linux code was ever written. The abandonment of SCO by its customers very seldom has anything to do with Linux other than being a possible choice for migration. But if Linux didn't exist, SCO would still be in trouble and still would be losing customers. The stupidity of this Linux related lawsuit may have accelerated that process slightly, but it isn't the root cause.

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