Daniel Lyons of Forbes Admits Being Snowed by SCO 403
certain death writes "Daniel Lyons of Forbes Magazine has admitted to being snowed by SCO, regarding their lawsuit over Linux and SCO code. He specifically mentions Groklaw's role in the case, and regrets his early articles giving the company the benefit of the doubt. 'I still thought it would be foolish to predict how this lawsuit (or any lawsuit) would play out. I even wrote an article called "Revenge of the Nerds," which poked fun at the pack of amateur sleuths who were following the case on a Web site called Groklaw and who claimed to know for sure that SCO was going to lose. Turns out those amateur sleuths were right. Now some of them are writing to me asking how I'd like my crow cooked, and where I'd like it delivered. Others in that highly partisan crowd have suggested that I wanted SCO to win, and even that I was paid off by SCO or Microsoft. Of course that's not true. I've told these folks it's not true. Hasn't stopped them. The truth, as is often the case, is far less exciting than the conspiracy theorists would like to believe. It is simply this: I got it wrong. The nerds got it right.'"
Thank you, Daniel (Score:5, Insightful)
He's only... (Score:3, Insightful)
He's only a journo who got it wrong.
I wonder about the investors who will now lose pretty well everything they banked on the crapshoot.
Then there's also the poor employees who will undoubtably suffer as they seek employment elsewhere. I'm quite certain most of them don't say a lot of bad things about Darl publicly with their names attached, but they have some real feeling of betrayal all the same.
So a journo got it wrong, not like he's Dan Rather being lead down the garden path and left there by CBS researchers and management.
of course he doesn't have a crapshoot for $70 million either...
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:2, Insightful)
Speaking down to us? (Score:1, Insightful)
-foo
Courage. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we only had more journalists willing to do this about other things... Like Iraq, WMD etc. It takes courage to admit you were taken in, I applaud this.
Took it like a trooper... (Score:5, Insightful)
So he thought wrong. So did the people who thought the CueCat would be a tool found on every household computer.
As far as I see it, he's taken his lumps, and he's ready to go on with life.
Works for me... so am I.
I respect a man who can admit he was wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the attitude? (Score:5, Insightful)
One step further, for someone writing on the technology field - it doesn't serve his purpose to put out condescending statements like "the nerds got it right".
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:4, Insightful)
Sucks to be you, Dan-O... (Score:3, Insightful)
'fessing up to being wrong? but how much of that is just to save your reputation, and how much is true 'oh, man, I messed up...' sentiment?
Forgiveness? Heh. Please. Any fool with two neurons would've figured out that SCO was shoveling manure a long, long time ago... and wouldn't have waited until their buddy was on the gallows platform before shouting long and loud about how he'd deceived you.
You've made your bed, Mr. Lyons. Now lie in it. /P
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:4, Insightful)
People like you make me fucking sick.
Idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:5, Insightful)
And his rudeness in persisting to call those who were right "nerds" says a lot more.
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps in the future these fine financial journalists, when dealing with matters surrounding technology, should do their fucking jobs and talk to the actual fucking people who know about the fucking technology, as opposed to a pack of fucking litigous bastards whose business model amounted to extorting licensing fees.
I don't think any better of this piece of Wallstreet crapola than I did ten minutes ago. It's impossible now for him to defend his indefensible position, so why the fuck should anyone give him the time of day on it.
Makes you wonder just how lacking in due dilligence and basic investigative techniques this particular cadre of journalists are. Okay, they're not liars. They're just fucking retards.
Re:you're glad it's over (Score:4, Insightful)
but i'm glad i wasn't aware it started. seriously, unless u had already known about this article is 0% interesting. "the nerds were right"? of-fucking-course they were, didn't he goto highschool?
Some writers dwell on words they've written. Some don't care and are already on to something else.
Where I went to college was a small college paper. Someone I knew wrote for it and as there's a thing as "lead time" -- that amount of time between when a writer turns something in and it is published, during which anything can (and often does) happen. She wrote something scathing, including mispelling the college president's name. Before the issue came out it was revealed the president had nothing to do with it and for the most part there really was no scandal. When the paper came out and I asked her how she felt about it she was "meh, whatever." Maybe it did bug her she listened to the wrong source or didn't bother to quiz the president directly, but she didn't appear to lament it one bit.
This bloke is doing his mea culpa, so he's of a different cut of cloth. There's all kinds, just like there's all kinds of people who run a business, from Warren Buffet to Darl McBride.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this my cue to call you a f***tard?
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:2, Insightful)
He could have just not written about it more, or tried to argue that the court came to the wrong conclusion, or something like that.
Courage nothing (Score:1, Insightful)
Fuck him. He stood up and openly ridiculed the informed opinions of many thousands of IT professionals who actually understood the issue and knew that SCO was full of shit and doomed to fail. Even as he backpedals, he manages to insult us further, calling us "the nerds", and "an amateur pack of sleuths", as if our lowly science degrees and years of experience in the industry are nothing compared to his ability to write shitty blog-worthy articles about his own ignorance.
I say we lash him to the rigging and let him go down with the ship along with McBride and co.
Re:Idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
my irony sense is tingling...
Critical mistakes and rebuilding respect (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way, he'd like it all to go away? After insulting millions of F/OSS users? I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon Daniel, sorry. The apology is a nice start, the roman catholic rosary is another option, and a whole lot of honest stories about how this community has built itself up from what many have said was a shaky foundation, to become a force even mighty MS has found itself bending to. Maybe some NICE ARTICLES about the people who have worked so hard to make sure that the code is clean, and so on.
You wanna win your respect back? The apology is a pleasant change, now get to work earning respect!
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right. He's a reporter. And a reporter doesn't have to be a goddamn expert on aeronautics to report on a jet crash, or an expert on maritime engineering to report on a ship sinking. Neither does a reporter have to be a kernel programmer to report on a company claiming they were ripped off by Linus Torvalds and other Linux kernel developers. In all causes, a journalist is supposed to check his sources, supposed to talk to both sides, supposed to, through the process of investigation, become something of an expert. He doesn't need to know jack-shit about fork(), but he should know something about the history of Unix. With that kind of knowledge, he would have soon enough realized that there was a con going on. SCO wasn't slick. They weren't clever at all. If some "amateur sleuths" could recognize right from the word "go" that this was a scam, then that suggests that he's just an idiot, and the question becomes what is Forbes doing paying idiots?
The apology comes to late. If this guy, and his fellow SCO-whores had been doing their jobs, investor money might have been saved and a stock scam might have been prevented. All it would have required was making some phone calls to guys like Linus to get the scoop.
This guy, and all his cohorts, are shameful embarassments. They should be fired, not given kudos because, after the fucking company they were giving editorial blowjobs to has crashed and burned, they're shamed into admitting how stupid they were.
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:1, Insightful)
Yah...a nerd. Sorry, but that's what those type of people are relative to the general population. It's definitely not a bad thing, just the way it is. It's not a bad word.
Re:"The nerds got it right.." (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit that I stopped thinking of him as a viable journalist shortly after he started covering this case. In his article, he mentions that he based his writing on what SCO told him, and that he'd been burned once before by not bothering to cover the whole DOS lawsuit. If I had been in his shoes, I would have immediately done a search on Unix, and found out about the BSD/AT&T lawsuit, and how that turned out. At which point, I would have (had I not already known anything about the situation) thought, "Hmm. Sounds like there might be another side to this story," and, being a technical journalist for a financial rag, used my contacts at, say, IBM, or even some uninvolved third party like Red Hat or Novell to try and get a full picture before reporting.
Corporate Feed Reporting has got so bad nowadays that unless I see evidence in the first paragraph of an article that it is either an opinion piece, or that the reporter has consulted multiple parties, not just copied and pasted some text out of some document provided to them by some other party, I just skip over the rest of the article and do a search on the topic for an article that at least clings to a shred of journalistic integrity.
An idea I came up with after reading this yesterday:
Why not apply a rating system to journalists similar to that being used on Wikipedia by the UCSC crew [ucsc.edu]? A journalist's rating is affected by whether they follow journalistic procedures in their writing, who they sell their article to (separate rating system for publishers based on the ratings of journalists who publish throgh them), accuracy of factual reporting, whether they include large blocks of text found to be non original, etc.
Re:What about the attitude? (Score:4, Insightful)
With a history of being wrong and smearing those with a different view, he sets a precedent as being an unreliable news source and despite whatever appologies are given - a liability to Forbes as a trustworthy news source. He would have to work to regain credibility with people checking the facts against what he said.
SCO's case was at least strong enough to survive early motions to dismiss, despite IBM's high-powered team of lawyers working to debunk the SCO version as thoroughly as possible. That a judge, after years of discovery and motions, was able to finally decide authoritatively that SCO was in the wrong and the geeks/nerds/whatever had it right, doesn't mean the case didn't, at some point, appear to have at least some merit. Saying "journalist shoulda checked his facts better" misses the point, I think -- if the facts were that blatant the litigation would have been over in 3 months, not 3 years. I can forgive him for not seeing through something it took a learned and experienced jurist some time to get through.
What Apology? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:He's only... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't feel too badly for the investors. Last I looked they consisted largely of insiders and speculators. This isn't an Enron that took people's retirement savings through underhanded machinations.
He made up his mind, then decided the "facts". (Score:5, Insightful)
He belittled Groklaw and PJ (and he is still doing so) for digging up the real facts while he kept repeating the "smoking gun" claim of SCO as a "fact".
I could have accepted that INITIALLY, but as Groklaw collected more and more facts from the EXPERTS (the people who WROTE *nix) there is no way anyone who didn't have an agenda could have still believed that SCO had a case.
Yet he kept right on supporting SCO
Re:RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
1) It took him a while to say what we've known all along -- that SCO got this wrong. I mean doing this after SCO files for bankruptcy is like vocally backing a sports team and then doing a complete 180 after that team gets slaughtered. He had what, 4 years to change his mind? Why just now?
2) The man is a journalist -- not an expert as you pointed out. As a journalist, why form an opinion without asking the experts? You know, do a little research like we were taught in grade school. He's not an expert...let alone a journalist if he isn't going to dig in.
3) Yes, the actual villains are the SCO group -- but they wouldn't have had much weight if any of these people didn't trumpet their case. Others have pointed out Enderle, O'Gara, and Didio as well. These were the people that PHBs and the like were listening to, not the so-called "nerds" who got it right. These folks share a responsibility in the FUD-slinging that went on.
4) I don't think I'm holding the man to unreasonable standards. I think admitting one's mistake in a timely manner isn't unreasonable. I'd like to think journalistic integrity shouldn't be unreasonable...especially if you're a journalist.
5) It's a tough sell when you end up wrong on an issue against a lot of zealots. I think he'll continue writing and the PHBs will continue to read his stuff. "Awww, he apoligizes when he makes a mistake. That makes him even more credible!" As for me, I'm taking anything these particular folks write with all the salt in Costco.
Re:He made up his mind, then decided the "facts". (Score:5, Insightful)
Best analogy today. (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed when his buddy was standing upon the gallows, only then did he cry (and loudly) about how evil his buddy had been for deceiving him and abusing his naive trust.
It shows his true character.
If Microsoft ever files a patent suit against Linux, do you believe that Lyons will not be the first and one of the loudest proclaiming the righteousness of Microsoft's claim?
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that would be an apology. This "nerds" and "amateur sleuths" isn't an apology, it's an insult and an indication that he probably doesn't even know how he went wrong.
Note to Daniel Lyons (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me he's a 'sound bite' journalist - he sees his job as merely copying down a juicy sound bite instead of actually researching a topic. That said, it could also be that he's too lazy to do the research, or too thick to understanding the technical analaysis at Groklaw.
Probably all of the above.
I think you mean "whore". (Score:3, Insightful)
Naw. Lots of professions have ethical standards for their professionals.
Being a "professional" doesn't mean that you just do it for money. Although it can be used that way.
Being a "professional" also means that you follow the ethical standards of your profession. Otherwise your behaviour is "unprofessional".
The word you're thinking of is "whore" or "prostitute". One who sells one's abilities, talent, or name for an unworthy purpose.
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone changes their mind, cool - esp. if someone changes it after careful consideration. But after their pet theory/ideology/etc gets squashed like a SCO's bug on IBM's windshield, and after so vehemently defending the likes of McBride & co.? Sure, he hedged his bets after awhile - all pros do that.
IMHO, I can understand what the guy is feeling. His call was bad, his credibility on the matter is toast, and he probably didn't enjoy having to write that. I will further give him at least the props for loyalty to his ideas and prognostications (then again, it isn't like he could magically change them and think no one would notice, either).
That said, his behavior was quite crass, somewhat elitist, and quite frankly, he gets what he gives, y'know?
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the amount of research it took. Then we applied the fact that IBM didn't have retards for lawyers and predicted a victory for IBM. This guy is pretending it took any research at all to come to the right opinion is an insult. It took five seconds of "hey these guys are lying through their teeth" to come to that conclusion. It's like finding an argument that concludes "Therefore, Bananas can fly." -- We don't need to know anything about the argument to know that it isn't sound.
Re:About this NERD label... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, so explain to me in great detail, including the most miniscule operations of every machine, every vehicle, and person involved, how the US Post Office takes a letter from your mailbox and successfully delivers it to another mailbox across the company.
Come on. You send mail How the **** can you do that and yet not know how it all works?
Idiot (your choice of words, not mine)
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep reading these comments in the thread - since when did "nerd" become and actual, serious insult? Did we have to trade it to the PC Police to get "black" back a couple of years ago, or something?
Lighten up. Personally I prefer "geek" (mostly because it's more accurate), but anyone who has strong feelings about the technical merits of "SCO vs The World" is, by definition, a nerd.
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt it is by accident that he used the insult instead of the adjective here. He was made to look like a tool by us geeks and clearly isn't happy about it.
Re:He's only... (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that reading a "reputable" financial publication would fall under "the weakest analysis".
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:4, Insightful)
There seems to be a few people around here that think spreading lies, but through ignorance rather than intent, is somehow better, or less bad. They're both bad, they both can do harm. He owes every single developer of the Linux kernel, including the guys at IBM, an apology. He maligned them, and until he does that, rather than this rather shallow generalized apology to "nerds" and "amateur sleuths", he hasn't apologized at all.
So fuck him. He doesn't have a reputation in my books, and deserves all the derision that gets heaped on him.
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, how does a guy who writes articles in a financial magazine about lawsuits get off calling *anyone* nerds?!
BAD (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, you got it wrong and the nerds got it right
You didnt just 'get it wrong', you got ALL of the facts completely and blatantly ass up. Lets not pretend it was just an unlucky guess on your part - like putting a dollar on the wrong horse. What you did is akin to turning up in court to provide a character reference for Al Capone, and lavishing the most extreme praise upon most honest self when you barely know the guy.
OF COURSE anyone with half a brain knows why you did it. Nobody thinks you are incompetant or stupid - we just think you are greedy and unethical.
Re:No, it's not. (Score:5, Insightful)
"If I've learned anything from recent Presidential elections, changing your opinions due to new information is a sign of weakness. One must make a choice and ride it all the way down."
At the time of this posting, you've been modded +5, Funny. The sad part, though, is that what you say is absolutely true, and not just of American politics. It's certainly true up here in Canada, as well. If a politician sticks to his guns no matter what new information comes out, then they're seen as being decisive. If they change their minds, they're weak, wishy-washy, and clearly not leadership material.
Voters are, by and large, stupid.
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:3, Insightful)
The clue that no "reporter" should have missed (Score:5, Insightful)
That red flag was when SCO presented their excuse for not showing anyone (except under draconian NDAs) what the alleged copyright infringement actually consisted of. They didn't want that information getting to the Linux crew, they said, because that would allow them to remove the offending code.
That there is all you need to know to call "BS". It is your obligation to notify someone you suspect of infringing your copyright of just how you think they are infringing your copyright so that they can remedy the wrong. You cannot say "I would rather let them continue to infringe my copyright so I can soak them for more damages"; despite what SCO might have you believe, that is not the purpose of copyright law. As for the idea that the offending code would be scrubbed from the record in order to hide the evidence of past infringement, again, that's BS. If there was copied code in the kernel, as SCO assured us there was, SCO could have downloaded copies of the kernel twice a day to have a historical record of the violation.
Lyons still refers to "amateur sleuths" as though he's some kind of professional. What sort of "professional" doesn't investigate the most glaring contradiction between what someone claims they want and what they're actually trying to arrange?
Re:Courage. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:2, Insightful)
LK
Re:No, it's not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I respect a man who can admit he was wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:4, Insightful)
- They got the outcome the wanted...no riots in LA.
- To believe OJ was innocent because he was framed. You had to believe the lead detective took a bloody glove from the scene of the crime, planted OJ's DNA evidence on the glove, and deposited it at OJ's estate. All because he was a raciest, which had to be the case. Because 12 years eariler, someone heard him use the word "nigger" one time.
Generally speaking. When the police find a glove with the blood of the victim, and the dna of the accused. At the accused's residence some miles away from the scene of the crime. The police are not grand standing and usually have a pretty good case.A better example might be the Michael Jackson case. While most people may believe that Jackson molests young boys under the age of 16. It seems that these 2 boys were NOT molested by him. It was stupid for the DA to bring that case against Michael Jackson. Even Geraldo Rivera was able to show that the DA's case was full hot air only a week after the DA decided to indite.
A reporter is not supposed to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. They are supposed to collect facts and make meaningful determinations about those facts. All information is not to be given the same weight.
As far as you charges against Groklaw. From all the reading I have done there. They would have been open to real evidence. If there had been an article where IBM said they were going to bury SCO with there own code. It would have turned heads. If SCO had actually produced code so the linux maintainers could mitigate the damage. Groklaw would of looked at the code, and I believe had admited that someone was in the wrong for putting it in Linux.
From day one, when SCO said "We are not telling you what lines of code infringe, or you will remove them and say you are not liable." It was pretty clear they were not to be trusted. Step one would have been to ask that code to be removed. Step two would be to prove that IBM put it there in the first place.
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:1, Insightful)
With the greatest agreement that it was your cue to deride the original poster, fucktard would be a better word than 'fucktard.' There is no inherent property of the word fuck that must make it offensive. The fact that it is considered vulgar by some goes back to the Norman invasion of England when the language of the gentry became French and anyone who wanted to consider themselves upper class, spoke in that language. English words such as fuck and cunt became derided and were considered the language of the common masses. Indeed the word 'vulgar' is merely Latin for 'common.' It's simply a class thing. As the middle classes arose and put on airs and graces, they too started to condemn the language of the common man. Printed and written matter taking it's first steps amongst the middle and upper classes naturally led to such words being excluded from popular medium.
Those people who consider fuck to be a bad word, independent of any intent behind it, will not be fooled or mollified by a few wildcard symbols inserted in it. Those of us who do not consider the word to be bad (i.e. those whose language has not been corrupted by upper-class French sycophants) and therefore would not have been offended by the word, are now instructed to be offended by the emphasis placed on the word by the inclusion of the wildcard symbols, as their inclusion clearly signifies that regardless of our own opinions the intent is to be obscene. And we are more concerned by intent than we are by accident of form due to cultural background.
Now of course, you are free to write fucktard or f**ktard as you choose and I would not presume otherwise. But for the logical reasons in the previous paragraph, I believe that it would be better to write either fucktard itself, or some other words entirely, perhaps, 'oxygen thief' or other amusing term. It is disturbing that people's objection is to the fuck part of the compound word fucktard, when the latter part is clearly derived from retard, a clinical condition. But such are the vaguaries of word-prejudice.
-H.
Re:No, it's not. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have generalized this to "people are generally stupid".
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:2, Insightful)
Changing your mind and admitting your were wrong is healthy and normal, and we need more people to do it more often.
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:5, Insightful)
I began reading Groklaw not long after the suit was filed. Someone on Slashdot mentioned it and I checked it out. What I found was that PJ asked the same question everyone else was asking: where is the code? Some things in the initial filing by SCO were just silly, like the whole "Linux was a bicycle and IBM stole our code to make it a Cadillac" bit. PJ objected to it, as did others. The problem was that SCO never provided any real evidence. When SCO's lawyers made assertions that were wrong, Groklaw corrected them. PJ and others dug up information and discussed how relevant it was to the case. I would agree that for a while PJ's personal comments became a little tiring, so I skipped them. But, it is rather understandable when she was being personally attacked by not only SCO and their lawyers, but also by Lyons and other journalists who could not stand being called out for their "press-release reporting."
So, please show me where (and since you say it was frequent you should have no trouble there) false "facts" were presented.
Snowed by SCO or bought by MS? (Score:1, Insightful)
I have met some people (even in the IT industry) whose technological horizon is limited to what they see and hear during free lunches and golfing trips. If Mr. Lyons falls into this group, that would partially explain his tireless support of SCO up until bankruptcy time.
At worst, he's a shill, with or without direction from Forbes. Remember, some publications are well-known for writing articles that are favorable to advertisers. I doubt SCO is advertising in Forbes but I'll bet MS is. Was Lyons directed to write puff pieces for Forbes? Maybe his latest article is "taking one for the team".
Time will tell. Nobody gets to be this wrong for this long and retained as a journalist for a publication that has been thoroughly discredited. Unless, of course, he was just following orders, in which case he remains as a valued team member. His presence (or absence) from Forbes will tell the real story.
Re:Thank you, Daniel (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No, it's not. (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a problem with not admitting you're wrong, and sticking to your problems.
There is also a problem with changing your mind, then changing your mind, then perhaps changing your mind again.
Hence "flip-flop" rather than just "flip". Indeed the adjectives "flip-floppy" and "wishy-washy" both imply a back and forth (perhaps more than once) situation.