James T. Dennis, of
Starshine and Linux Gazette’s Answer Man fame
has written about CNN’s TV coverage this weekend.
CNN Dollars & Sense Segment Highlights Linux
This weekend CNN, the world’s largest and most widespread
Television/Cable news channel, put a brief segment highlighting
Linux as the lead item in their “Dollars & Sense” coverage.
This played every hour for most of the weekend.
The story prominently featured video clips of many stuffed
penguins and red hats.
“The penguin stands for Linux, an operating system that’s
competing with Windows to run your computer.”
There are a few innacuracies (“it’s not owned by anyone”) and
damnations by faint praise (“`I think it was two and a half months
without having to reboot'”). (I’ve had servers with uptimes of over
a year!)
There is also the statement by one user (Jim Allen),
“Everything on this computer is free. I paid for nothing.”
… which, while probably true, is not what we mean by “free”
and is secondary to the reasons why most Linux users have adopted
the platform.
Technically savvy Linux users can’t help but raise an eyebrow at
the CNN reporter’s attempt to understand open source in the
statement:
“Unlike Microsoft, that closes the blinds to anyone wanting to
know the nuts and bolts … Linux is open and shares it’s [sic]
so-called source code with everyone”
Oh well! They’re trying. (This passage is accompanied by some
amusing graphics of the MS Windows logo with a set of venetian
blinds closing over it, and then with our mascot, Tux, showing some
kernel sources scrolling over/behind his white tummy).
Playing up the Microsoft angle they made an oblique reference to
the “Hallowe’en Document” (not by that name, of course) and showed
a clip of Mr. Bob Herbold, COO of Microsoft,saying:
“It’s up to us to, once again, put an offering out there in the
marketplace that makes them hesitate, and say, ‘I really should
consider Windows'”
I also can’t help but note that “hesitation” is the desired
effect of FUD — hesitate to try anything new, go with the flow,
accept whatever your vendors ships with etc.
The transcript of CNN’s story can be found at:
http://cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/9811/14/stc.00.html
(Use your “Find in Page” (Navigator) or “Search Text” (Lynx’s
[/] key) to look for “penguin” to find the start of the story; it’
about ten screens down in my layout).
There was also an earlier LinuxToday
article pointing to: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9811/10/windows.competitor/
… which is apparently an electronically posted precursor to
the televised coverage).
The “Hallowe’en Document”
(http://www.opensource.org/halloween.html)
… was covered by LinuxToday at (https://www.linuxtoday.com/stories/542.html)
… and has resulted in a flurry of press activity, online and
in other media. In only a couple of weeks it has been given it’s
own section on Yahoo!
Will this story bring us a raging new band of Linux newbies?
Will Microsoft try to exploit this story as a refutation of the DoJ
claims in their ongoing anti-trust investigation
(Ironically the growth of Linux *as free software* might owe
quite a bit to the fact that the overwhelming consensus among many
aspiring young programmers has been that they couldn’t commercially
compete based on code quality — bringing many to the conclusion
that “giving it away” was the only option that would make quality
operating system software available for their own use. That this
has opened up some business opportunities for secondary and
derivative businesses — such as Red Hat, and Caldera to package
and enhance the core free systems, is merely a footnote. We can
only hope that our judicial representatives can see through this
flavour of FUD and fog).
(JimD)