Raymond and Matzen on Samizdat: "unpublishably bad"
Eric Raymond gives his opinion of Samizdat. Summary: it “is unpublishably bad. Fix it or bury it.”
Jem Matzen has more comments:
The only shocking aspect of Ken Brown's book is that it contains not one shred or iota of evidence to back any of his implications. While he doesn't directly accuse, he also doesn't present any good reasons to believe that we should listen to him. The bibliography, for instance, has 81 items of reference, less than five of which are traditionally recognized reference sources. The greater part of Brown's sources are personal Web pages of people who are not considered experts in the field of Unix, Linux, GNU, or other related subjects, home pages of people who are considered experts but were speaking generally about the subject of the history of Unix, and quotes taken grossly out of context from interviews that Brown did not conduct or take part in.
You don't have to be an author or professional writer to know that when presenting an argument professionally, the strength of your sources is the strength of your position. With no reliable sources, a position paper, thesis, or essay carries no more weight than the Anonymous Coward comments on weblogs and message forums -- in other words, it's bunk. For entertainment purposes only. Read at your own risk. Worse than bunk, it's FUD because it pushes an agenda without presenting any proof. [...]
It is the worst journalism, the worst research, the worst case of abuse of the literary and technical world that I have ever had the profound displeasure of reading.[...]
I could find no evidence of SCO funding. For all the times I've tried in the past, they never return calls or emails and I doubt very much that they'd tell me anyway. My feeling is that SCO doesn't have the money to play these kinds of silly games with; history dictates that Darl McBride and his cohorts are perfectly willing to generate their own untruths for the press and would probably view the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution as unnecessary.
posted Fri 28 May 2004 in /issues/adti | link
Archives 2008: Apr Feb 2007: Jul May Feb Jan 2006: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun Jan 2005: Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan 2004: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan 2003: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Martin Pool.