Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 20:18:28 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Anti-BSD FUD Message-ID: <20000607201827.A2465@physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20000607093152.008b4910@mail85.pair.com>; from adam@whizkidtech.net on Wed, Jun 07, 2000 at 09:31:52AM -0500 References: <4.3.2.7.2.20000606184736.04b0f2f0@localhost> <3.0.6.32.20000607093152.008b4910@mail85.pair.com>
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G. Adam Stanislav said on Jun 7, 2000 at 09:31:52: > At 18:47 06-06-2000 -0600, Brett Glass wrote: > >See > > > >http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2582875,00.html > > Strange thing... I wanted to make sure to know what exactly "fud" means, so > I checked Merriam-Webster's online dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/). > > According to the dictionary, "fud" is synonymous with "fuddy-duddy", which > is a (circa) 1904 word meaning "one that is old-fashioned, unimaginative, > or conservative." > > But I don't think that's what you had in mind. > > Anyway, I always thought fud was a linuxy slang word for twisting > propaganda. If my understanding of the word is correct, then I would not > say the article is fud. It stands for "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" -- marketing tactics used by established players against new technology. It's often used by linux people to indicate twisting propaganda by big companies, but I've read that its origins are much older. According to the hacker dictionary (http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/FUD.html) FUD /fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products." The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. See IBM. After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon. > I *disagree* with the author, but I don't think he means to be distorting > facts for propaganda purposes, or, for that matter, that he is "anti-BSD" > (he does say BSD is a better OS than Linux, after all). I get the > impression he is expressing his opinion. Quite. He was quite clearly talking about the license and not to the software, so to open by attacking the article as "anti-BSD FUD" will not really encourage people to read your response further. R. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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