Mindcraft study funded by Microsoft Apr 13, 1999, 21 :22 UTC (34 Talkback[s]) (13023 reads) (Other stories by Dave Whitinger)
The mainstream media reads Linux Today, and I want to make sure that this message is heard loud and clear:
In regard to the recent Mindcraft survey that showed that Windows NT outperforms Linux, the careful journalist will understand that Microsoft provided the funding for this "analysis". Take a look at this piece of information, hidden in the middle of the white paper:
"Mindcraft, Inc. conducted the performance tests described in this report between March 10 and March 13, 1999. Microsoft Corporation sponsored the testing reported herein."
As you are writing your story for tomorrow's edition, please realize that you have a responsibility to report the facts. The fact here is that Microsoft has paid an organization to create an analysis of their product against their competitor's product.
Your readers deserve to understand that this was not an independant and un-biased report.
To help you round out your story, here are some links to other published analyses:
Jeremy Allison, a member of the Samba project, has discovered that their claims of having searched for support in the newsgroups appear to be false, as a usenet search turned nothing up.
Additionally, the original author of Samba, Andrew Tridgell, has stated that they set a parameter that caused Samba to have degraded performance.
