March 11th, 2005
A better way to fight the FUD
A few days ago I criticized the OSDL and asked its leadership to display some PR skills.
Yesterday, OSDL President Stuart Cohen (left)answered the call.
Listen to a master at work:
"There was a lot of due diligence around the world with people looking at the code and looking at software stacks, and all this work validated that there was nothing there–no risk, no issue," Cohen said. "The SCO court case ended up on every Web site, in every newspaper and every magazine. Everybody had to do due diligence. You could not be a CTO or CIO and not do due diligence in 2003-2004 when SCO was suing end users.
"And look at what happened with the market share: People did not say, ‘Let’s wait until this thing is over.’ If anything it accelerated the use of Linux, so it is one of the best things that ever happened to the operating system."
Now I understand why why press questions are usually bumped to the top.
I realize that to people who are working on real business problems marketing and PR look like a dance, a game, even a charade. But moving people toward change requires a deft touch, and I for one am gratified to see that Mr. Cohen has it.
But what do you think? Let us know in TalkBack.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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