GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
Desktop Survival Project Home Preface Advocacy History Distributions Installing GNU/Linux Basic Survival Wajig Applications AI, Machine Learning, Data Science Android - GNU/Linux Devices Audio Backup Booting CD Chinese ChRoot Clock Command Line Databases DIA Directories Disks EcoSysL Emacs Email Evolution Files File Systems Firewalls Floppy Disks FreedomBox Glade GNOME Graphics, Images, Photos Hardware Initialisations on Booting Installation Examples Internet IOT Java KDE Kernels Keyboard Konqueror KVM Switch LATEX Log System Login Magellan MATE Mathematics Memory Modems Mounting Devices MS/Windows Music MySQL Nautilus Networks Nextcloud Network File System NFS NT File System Oracle Packages Partitions Passwords PDF Power Management PPP Presentations Printing Python R Remote Desktops Rsync Samba Scanning Science Screens Security Spreadsheet SSH Swap Teradata Data Warehouse Themes TV Unity USB Version Control Video Virtualization Voice over IP WebCam WordPress Web Sites Word Processing and Printing X XML Troubleshooting Index

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE UPDATED SURVIVAL GUIDE

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt

FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) was originally defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company. He used it to describe the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that the IBM sales people were spreading to their customers who might be considering the competitions products. The competition was Amdahl! More recently the term FUD has increasingly become associated with Microsoft, using the tactic to ensure customers stay with their products. Spreading incorrect and unsubstantiated rumours to fuel doubt about a product is the name of the game.

An example of this is a famous case initiated by a company called SCO which attempted to extract “rent” from all users of Linux. The company claimed that Linux included code that they owned. Hence, everyone using Linux had to be worried that SCO would soon come after them with substantial financial claims. Having been interviewed by the Australian press on this matter the author of this book become well aware of the effective impact this type of campaign can have on organisations considering a move to GNU/Linux from Microsoft.

In particular, SCO took IBM to court over the matter. The company did not disclose any code publicly, hiding behind the fact that they disclosed it all to a judge and regrettably this limited their ability to disclose it publicly. Fortunately, in February 2005, this Judge Kimball found it incredible that after trash talking IBM in public for two years, SCO has presented no evidence to back up their words:

Viewed against the backdrop of SCO's plethora of public statements concerning IBM's and others' infringement of SCO's purported copyrights to the UNIX software, it is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed SCO's alleged copyrights through IBM's Linux activities.

Fortunately, while this attempt to discredit GNU/Linux was unwelcome, it certainly lead to significant due diligence to ensure there was no risk to GNU/Linux. Unfortunately, the case continues to drag out in the court even, to April 2007, wasting time and money, but for what purpose? How are we as humanity going to really benefit from all this?

Below we collect some reported statements from Microsoft that are always interesting to reflect on:

• Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said, under oath, during Microsoft's antitrust trial, that if he didn't like the judge's decision he'd withdraw Windows from the market. We can't make such threats with GNU/Linux! It will always be there and no one can threaten to withdraw if from the market, though some have tried.