Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Forbes' Dan Lyons Hates Groklaw, Wants to Be BFF with Linux

Posted by Zonk on Thu Oct 25, 2007 04:56 PM
from the hard-to-tell-the-winner-without-a-score-card dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Software The Internet The Media Linux
Anastasia Beaverhousen writes "In what many will consider either a total change of heart (or complete BS), Forbes columnist Dan Lyons was caught on video by Linux.com (also owned by Sourceforge) at a recent conference professing his undying love for Linux. The words, "pry it out of my hands at gunpoint" were even used at one point. 'After wading though some of the Lyons vs. PJ mire while writing this brief piece, I found myself wondering, "Aren't we all supposed to be grown-up journalists, or bloggers, or whatever? Aren't Linux and Free Software supposed to be about love and harmony and making the world a better place? Can't we, please, smile on our brother, everybody love one another, right now?" In any case, old-hippie sentiments aside, Dan Lyons says that despite the many attacks on him as a supposedly anti-Linux attack dog, he loves Linux. And uses it. And that he has trouble understanding why anyone would think he doesn't love Linux. '"
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: Forbes' Dan Lyons wants to be BFF with Linux by lisah (987921)
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Forbes' Dan Lyons Hates Groklaw, Wants to Be BFF with Linux 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Dan Lyons is a douchebag (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GroceryShopper (1017136) on Thursday October 25 2007, @05:03PM (#21120259)
    Sure Dan, we love you too. Now, go fetch that Vista bone and Bill will give you a biscuit. Yeah, yeah, good boy.
    • The real story for those here who care to see it, is that there's a huge population of people for whom Linux is not mutually exclusive from Windows.

      People who can love linux without hating Microsoft. People who can objectively use the best tool for the job.

      I'm a web developer. On any project save for .Net, it's obvious that the LAM* stack is the best server-side technology, and just as obvious (in my personal case) that Windows is the best environment for my dev box.

      • Re:The real story... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by osu-neko (2604) on Thursday October 25 2007, @07:09PM (#21121919)

        Yup. LAMP on the servers, OS X on the dev box, Windows on the fun box (with all my favorite PC games installed). Windows is on the dev box too, although usually running under Parallels, and generally not that often. For various reasons, I happen to like all three operating systems. I've never understood why liking one of them is supposed to make me hate one or both of the other two. Nor do I want some uber-system that would supposedly take the best of all three and give me everything I want in one package. People don't understand that there are trade-offs in any design, and no matter which way you go, it'll make it better in some situations and worse in others. There is not and never can be a single OS that works best for all people in all situations. Better to have diversity, and use the best tool for each task at hand.

        Incidentally, this makes for a quick and easy touchstone for judging someone's intelligence and reasonability. Ask them, "What's the best X?" If they answer with anything other than a question, "Best for what?", they're probably an unintelligent or unreasoning zealot of some sort or another. The question itself is nonsensical -- without defining "at what", the term "best" makes no sense. The fact that the question makes sense to them and that they even have an answer is a sign of muddled thinking.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by nostriluu (138310)

          There is not and never can be a single OS that works best for all people in all situations.


          Umm, why not?

          (I'm talking out of Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, btw).

  • Who is this guy, and why should i care? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2007, @05:03PM (#21120263)
    For those of us who aren't omnipotent, who is this guy?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by joeyspqr (629639)
      if you're omnipotent, you don't care
      if you're omniscient, you don't have to ask
      and if you're omnipresent, you're standing right next to him and can ask

    • Re:Who is this guy, and why should i care? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Facetious (710885) on Thursday October 25 2007, @05:20PM (#21120489) Journal
      Early in the SCO saga, Forbes magazine essentially swallowed the story that Linux was pwn3d by SCO through direct copying, derivative works, etc. Dan Lyons was the man behind the pen at Forbes. Of course the concept of value addition without $$$ was foreign to Forbes, so it made sense in their little world that Linux must be stolen. Dan and PJ from Groklaw.net said some less than flattering things about each other, and the rest is history.

      Lyons did eventually apologize [slashdot.org].
      • As appologies go, I'm less than impressed.

        To me it seems more like his last payment check bounced. (Which also sums up what I think of him as a "journalist".)

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Facetious (710885)
          Yeah, PJ expressed some similar sentiment. Still, I would prefer Lyons' half-hearted (or career saving) apology to Rob Enderle's ego driven life-story non-apology any day.
      • He's probably better known these days as the guy who writes the "Fake Steve Jobs [blogspot.com]" blog. He wrote it anonymously for more than a year, picking up a not-inconsiderable audience (including both the real Steve Jobs and Bill Gates), until his identity was uncovered this past summer [nytimes.com]. Forbes rolled writing FSJ into his portfolio, and he has a Fake Steve book [perseusbooksgroup.com] coming out this month.
        • want one better, through dan lyons personally blog he blogged about how bloggers are fakes and nothing they say has any real value. He targeting Pj of groklaw with that, but at the same time he was pretending to be fake steve jobs.

          lying lyons as I call him isn't worth the Hard drive space to store his works on.

    • Re:Who is this guy, and why should i care? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kidbro (80868) <dibbe@@@linux...nu> on Thursday October 25 2007, @05:54PM (#21120935)
      For those of us who aren't omnipotent, who is this guy?

      Heck, even those of us who are omnipotent haven't heard of this guy. That's how important he is!

    • Among other things "Fake Steve Jobs" and the guy that deciding that harassing a blogger at the personal level presenting a different view was good form. I'm not sure if he was the one that published the home address or if it was the Amityville Horror that was also on the payroll.
    • Of course, that's just my opinion. Lets review his record.

      He came out strongly against blogs, bloggers, and all such. Only professional journalists like him should write.

      He's been saying for years that Lotus Notes was dead and gone, just to stir the pot and get talked about.

      He went to a lot of trouble to stand up for Sarah Radicatti (the Radicatti Group) after she was caught astroturfing her own badly written report.

      He wrote a blog calling himself "The Fake Steve Jobs" -- which is only slightly more distan

  • Professional troll (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2007, @05:06PM (#21120315)
    This guy loves Linux the same way a politician loves the media: It makes both an excellent tool for use, and an excellent target to attack in order to bolster one's own status. So, as long as he can play both sides, he gets to think of himself as the cleverest person who ever tricked a system into working for him.

    In other words, just another self-deluded troll actively preying on his audience.

    • Re:Professional troll (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gad_zuki! (70830) on Thursday October 25 2007, @05:50PM (#21120889)
      Im not defending this guy, but its possible to be pro-linux and against the politics of groklaw and PJ, the same way there are a lot of people who like microsoft products but arent defenders of microsoft politics. Too much groupthink around these parts lately.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by domatic (1128127)
        It's very possible. I've lost much of my admiration for PJ as this thing has drug on (though I have to give her points on being consistent about where she is coming from). Still, I believe that Lyons is backpedaling because SCO is so obviously toast. He's spewed anti-Linux crap for years and only lately does he try to re-invent himself (badly) as a balanced journalist. In general, your point is valid but in the particular case of "Lyin' Lyons" I don't buy it for a second.

      • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by davidsyes (765062)
        And, there are those like myself who, once we found Linux, pretty much had NO reason to use microsoft products. I USE windows98 only to load Lotus SmartSuite, and to play around with various windows-environment applications that I hardly ever notice. Without Lotus SmartSuite, I'd pretty much have NO reson to use ANY microsoft product.

        SO, I despise, utterly LOATHE and would wipe out with my magic wand, if I had one, microsoft's existence. Not because I LOVE Linux (I do, in that it gives me a way to escape m
        • aSSHOLE. The topic to which I responded is about or digressed into people who have or don't have undying love for msoft and Linux. What I am talking about is the guttural, visceral pain people go through BECAUSE of not getting what they want. Fanboys for Linux and fanboys for microsoft/name your company can come from the SAME cloth as the person whose "undying love" for Linux is being talked about.

          Some people on this site have to little depth of mind.
      • "Best Friends Forever"

        (which I wouldn't have known the answer to if it wasn't for those stupid Verizon commercials about some text messaging plan they have).

        /P

        • If you mean "idk, my bff Jill", that's Cingular. I kid you not, this is the reason I don't have a Cingular phone, because my brain hurts so much whenever I see one of their commercials on TV.
  • Just a wild guess, but maybe because we actually read his pieces parroting SCOX and attacking the Linux developer community?

  • For several years, he was front and center in the SCO FUD campaign - on the wrong side.

    His sudden "road to Damascus" moment is about as "convenient" as someone becoming a "born-again Christian" after being arrested.

    Believe at your own risk.

    • I know it's hard to believe, but when Linus Torvalds appears in front of you and tells you to stop fighting Open Source and siding with SCO, you do it.
      • Don't know about Linus, but if Tove Torvalds did that, I'd stop, because I know she could kick my ass.
    • "His sudden "road to Damascus" moment is about as "convenient" as someone becoming a "born-again Christian" after being arrested."

      Leave Paris Hilton and/or Michael Vick out of this.
    • I'll offer an alternative understanding.

      Forbes, of course, is a business magazine. In serious businesses, the leadership does not build a business plan on a fairy tale. From a corporate-business perspective, with no other knowledge of the issue, whom would you believe:

      a) A CEO who is an officer of the corporation, and may be personally, even criminally liable for patently false statements in things like SEC filings, or
      b) The people that CEO says stole some of his company's code/IP/whatever.

      I mean, how often does a publicly traded company sue someone 100x their size based on nothing but hot air? Lying is one thing. Lying when, sooner or later, you will be required to show evidence in a court of law, is something else again. Let's face it, SCO was breathtakingly brazen. I can certainly understand how someone might conclude what he did ... there's got to be SOMETHING there.

      Why it took him so long to wise up (or whether he did) would be another discussion.

      doc

      • Bullshit. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by khasim (1285) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Thursday October 25 2007, @06:28PM (#21121383)

        I mean, how often does a publicly traded company sue someone 100x their size based on nothing but hot air? Lying is one thing. Lying when, sooner or later, you will be required to show evidence in a court of law, is something else again. Let's face it, SCO was breathtakingly brazen. I can certainly understand how someone might conclude what he did ... there's got to be SOMETHING there.

        No. That's bullshit. Anyone looking at SCO's financials would see that they were losing business back before they filed the suit.

        Only an idiot would believe that story without checking ANY of the facts.

        And that's exactly what Forbes and Lyons did. In fact, they did worse. They refused to check any of the facts and instead they parroted, as if they were fact, the unsubstantiated lies that SCO kept spewing.
        • They refused to check any of the facts and instead they parroted, as if they were fact, the unsubstantiated lies...

          And this is different from the rest of the (*) press today how?

          * The word business omitted here as redundant.

      • Well, Daniel Lyons could have actually investigated the issue, instead of just swallowing what Darl Mcbride CEO said. The fact that he clearly didn't, says a lot about his skill as a journalist.

        Had he done some investigation, he would have found:

        • SCO had not produced any evidence.
        • SCO was stalling.
        • SCO's CEO (Mcbride) was all hot air.
        • Linux is developed in the open.
        • Linux has a very well documented history e.g mailing list archives, patches, and changelogs.
        • Any attempt to insert stolen source code into such a public project would be very visible.
        • Anyone accusing another party of inserting stolen source code into Linux, yet unable to produce any proof of this, is most likely full of shit.

        But instead Lyons (and others like Didio and O'gara) appears to have chosen which side to support based on 'partisan' issues i.e money makes the world go 'round, so those filthy hippies must have stolen stuff from good, honest, hard-working American corporations to make Linux work properly. Lyons' previous "apology" basically said "oops, they duped me as well. I bet on the wrong horse". If he was a real journalist, he would have quickly found some of the things I mentioned above and at least been suspicious of SCO and their claims. But he didn't. He's just a troll calling himself a "journalist".

        • >"He's just a troll calling himself a "journalist"."

          You shouldn't insult trolls by saying they're as low as Lyons.

          Some differences:

          1. Trolls will actually do research to back up their points. Lyin' Lyons never did.
          2. Trolls might be passionate about their positions and make you THINK!. Lyin' Lyons only wanted to self-promote.
          3. Some people say trolls might not be fit to sleep with pigs. Lyons, on the other hand, looked to be pretty much in bed with the MogTroll [slashdot.org]

          .

          Lyons isn't a troll - and he's not

      • >>I mean, how often does a publicly traded company sue someone 100x their size based on nothing but hot air?

        When their company is dead anyway, and msft is paying for the lawsuit, and msft is making sure that time small-time redneck scammers are making (for them) big bucks? McBride is getting $34K a month, btw.

        Forget this David vs Golieth, BS. The financing for the entire scam was arranged by msft. And msft has twice the market cap of IBM.

  • Lyons is a lying sack of shit (Score:3, Informative)

    by Master of Transhuman (597628) on Thursday October 25 2007, @05:20PM (#21120485) Homepage
    Just like his Microsoft handlers.

    I've seen enough of his FUD to know what he's about.

    He's just trying to recover some "street cred" so he can go at Linux again in the future.

    POS.

  • "pry it out of my hands at gnupoint"
  • When do we see a new blog by a mysterious character called "Fake Linux Torvalds"?

    (and what on Earth would he say? Torvalds is one Hell of an act to follow, y'know?)

    /P

  • So is dan a long-haired smelly communist now? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by walterbyrd (182728) on Thursday October 25 2007, @06:00PM (#21121027)
    I believe that's how he characterized all Linux users.

    Gotta love his lavish praise of "intrepid reporter" Maureen O'Gara. Dan just loved the way Maureen relentlessly stalked, and harassed, PJ and PJ's elderly mother. Especially the way Maureen bragged about obtaining, and researching PJ's private cell-phone records, and looking inside PJ's residence, and bashing PJ's religious beliefs. Maureen's action were so vile, that the entire editorial staff of linuxworld resigned in disgust. Dan loved it.

    Don't forget about how Danny squealed like a stuck pig about bloggers, and message board posters, not giving their true identity, then he turns out to be the fake Steve Jobs.

    Clearly, he misses the whole point, probably deliberately. Whether he personally likes Linux is meaningless. I don't dislike people for not liking Linux. People can hate Linux all they want, and they can say so, doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I think they sometimes make some good points. And, for all I care, people can hate groklaw, or PJ, as well.

    My problem with Lyons is that he's a liar, a hypocrite, and a bully. For somebody who loves Linux so much, he was certainly quick to side with the company that was trying to destroy Linux, and to have a complete hissy-fit against who opposed the scam. And where are these 67 positive Linux articles? Is he sure it isn't more like one or two, writen after it was decided that scox doesn't even own UNIX? And where are his retractions and apologies after it turned out the PJ, and the message board posters were right all along? Why isn't he slamming scox and msft for the obvious scam?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MightyMartian (840721)
      He's also a stock scam promoter. Let's never forget that he's sleeze from end to the other. What a pathetic and worthless piece of shit. Forbes deserves this crap-pile of a man.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Alsee (515537)
      For those who missed the Maureen O'Gara story on PJ, here's a link [slashdot.org] with the phone numbers and (most)addresses snipped out.

      The only word for it is creepy. And content free. The only two words for it are creepy and content free. No wait, that's three words....

      Long story story short, Maureen O'Gara stalked PJ posting JP's phone number address and home photo... reports that PJ apparently does not like the smell of paint thinner... and some strange guy apparently attempted to get into PJ's apartment... stalks to

  • The article that makes ME not believe Lyons (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Antaeus Feldspar (118374) on Thursday October 25 2007, @06:16PM (#21121221) Homepage

    Back when it was possible -- just barely -- for an intelligent person to think SCO might still have a case that they were just coincidentally showing no proof of, Dan Lyons was among those trying to portray SCO as in all likelihood a bunch of swell guys who had produced something of value, only to see it ripped off, and were now simply seeking just compensation for having been ripped off.

    That in itself is proof of nothing except excessive credulity.

    What makes Lyons a two-faced mealymouth is that in the same time period he wrote the infamous "Linux's Hit Men [forbes.com]" article, in which he excoriated the Free Software Foundation for seeking compensation/compliance in cases where swell programmers had produced something of value and put it under the GPL only to see the fruits of their labors ripped off. The Foundation, Lyons tells the reader, "doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners ... maybe, as some suggest, the foundation wants GPL-covered code to creep into commercial products so it can use GPL to force open those products." Lyons' final line? "Such a pity, comrade."

    So, let's sum up. When it's a commercial company which claims it has been ripped off (even if it's actively refusing to show anyone its evidence of the alleged ripoff under reasonable conditions) Lyons thinks it's perfectly okay for them to demand huge financial recompense. When it's open source coders that get ripped off, however, Lyons thinks it's pretty jerky for anyone to actually make the rippers-off comply with the license for the code they chose to use -- if not some sort of sinister conspiracy.

    Gee, I can't think why anyone would doubt the sincerity of Lyons' love for Linux and open source.

  • Middle Name? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Surely I can't be the first person to notice this, but would someone please tell me that this guy's middle name starts with a D?

  • Dan Lyon's isn't the only SCO Troublemaker (Score:3, Informative)

    by Cassini2 (956052) on Thursday October 25 2007, @09:07PM (#21123203)
    Andy Tanenbaum, the author of Minix, had a very interesting story about another SCO frontman, Ken Brown. http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/ [cs.vu.nl] Tanenbaum is somewhat famous for his advocacy of microkernel operating systems. The Linus Torvalds vs Andy Tanenbaum debates on the merits of microkernel (MINIX) operating systems versus monolithic (Linux) operating systems is something of a legend. Nevertheless, Tanenbaum defends Linux fairly vigorously, and this is another comment on SCO's, Dan Lyon's, and Ken Brown's general lack of research.
    • Indeed, he seems to have completely missed the point of Linux. Guess he just doesn't understand at all.

       

    • Same ignorant nincompoop who declared Lotus Domino/Notes dead several years ago...
      So you're saying he's right at least some of the time, then.
    • No. The first rule of Windows and Internet Explorer is that you don't
      talk about Windows and Internet Explorer.

    • >"What did Lyons do? He occasionally chatted up the SCO folks and asked them what was going to happen."

      I guess that explains all the restaurant tabs SCO ran up before it went bankrupt. Feeding the "pundits" who helped prime their pump-and-dump scam.

      Speaking of which - is is possible that the only reason Forbes is backing Lyons is a case of "if we don't hang to gether, we'll all hang separately?" After all, now that we have proof that Lyons didn't do proper research, he's a half-decent target to sue

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.