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JBoss's Fleury Abjures Astroturfing 170

Posted by michael from the turf-battle dept.
comforteagle writes "JBoss head honcho Marc Fleury has laid down the law about Astroturfing in the aftermath of being accused of the practice without actually admitting it was done. 'Our visibility and success puts our customers and partners in a situation where you expect and demand that employees of JBoss Inc. hold themselves to that higher standard. Let's put the professional back in professional open source. "Astroturfing" is hereby banned at JBoss, starting with me.'" jg21 writes "After the Slashdotting of the whole issue, the wider community took up the theme. LinuxWorld's editor in chief took to task those who sought to "pollute the knowledge space," and then Richard Öberg and Cameron Purdy took up the theme with a call to raise the cyber-bar when it coms to integrity. Now JBoss's CEO has recanted: there will be no more fake posts from JBoss staffers, he says. Hmm, time will tell."
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JBoss's Fleury Abjures Astroturfing More

JBoss's Fleury Abjures Astroturfing

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  • Cynicism is (perhaps too) easy. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:42PM (#9219324) Journal

    I often sign myself 'Simon the cynic' when I read about personage X making some sweeping statement about how things are going to be - but for me it comes down to where the benefit is to be had. If there is no precedent or no perceivable advantage, my reaction is often (as the Poster's) "Yeah, right!".

    In this case I have a (gut) feeling they're probably genuine. JBoss are up the proverbial creek - they're a commercial software house which relies on the same sort of markets as Open Source software, and they've just lost a lot of credibility. The only way out of it to them is to 'fess up, to publicly admit their wrongdoing, and pledge not to do it again. I'm also a firm believer in letting peoples actions decide my opinion of them - talk is after all cheap, especially in this digital age - and I believe in judging after the fact, not before. My regard for their (phenomenal) achievement dropped significantly when the story broke, but respect can be earnt over again. Let's see, indeed, but with an open mind.

    Now that they *have* made a public pledge, and if they're caught again, it's game over in the reputation stakes. Anyone can make a mistake, and society usually forgives a single error of judgement - we generally expect people to learn, however. I think that this itself should be sufficient to keep them on the straight and narrow... Of course, this is just a different form of cynicism :-)

    I thought the idea that pollution of the information space was a "crime" in and of itself was an interesting point - I generally consider the net to be something of a cesspool, and it's not just cream that floats to the top... On the other hand, dive right in (yuck. Nasty mental image) and there's a lot on offer freely which would be otherwise hard to obtain. I wonder when (if) the balance will tip so there's more cream than crap.

    Simon the cynic.

    • Re:Cynicism is (perhaps too) easy. (Score:5, Funny)

      by cryms0n ( 52620 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:48PM (#9219399)
      People, keep in mind, the above is potentially astroturfing by JBoss!

    • For the Confused Amoung Us (Score:5, Informative)

      by Shakrai ( 717556 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:57PM (#9219486) Journal

      This [astrian.net] is a brief description of astroturfing. I honestly had no idea what the heck it was.

      No, this isn't an attempt at karma-whoring. Don't mod me up if you think it is. I figured it'd be more helpful to Google it myself and post the definition then to post a stupid one-liner "WTF is astroturfing?"

    • They should have apologized. You know, something like "we're sorry". There's none of that there. Instead, he goes off on some vague rant about "competition" and "professionalism" and ends with "don't do it, it's bad".

      That means nothing. He's just trying to put out the fire he started without admitting that he or his crew did anything wrong.

      "Sorry". A powerful word, but apparently not present in his vocabulary.

    • "Responsibility" without accountability: too easy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:08PM (#9219628) Homepage Journal
      Presidents of countries, companies and other organizations have become fond of "apologizing" and taking "responsibility". But there's no accountability. JBoss's boss has confessed he ran a corporation which astroturfed, and why not? Once caught, their astroturfing was no longer as effective, and more expensive, so of course it'll decrease. But responsibility means response. Where's a real response to the lies spread by his propaganda corps? Running an American corporation, with its fundamental freedom from liability, what responsibility can he actually bear?

      • Re:"Responsibility" without accountability: too ea (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:28PM (#9219837) Journal
        Out of curiosity, what would you have him do? Seppuku? Pay people to download JBoss, instead of giving it away for free? Clean your refrigerator?
        • Errr, to elaborate, he did not in fact "apologize" or "take responsibility". I was just curious what additional recompense he was supposed to have made.
          • True - the slippery weasel (sorry, not you, "Otter" ;) didn't even explicitly apologize. He just made some excuses for bad behavior, then swore off it, starting with himself, without even offering to make his people stick to that policy. You're right: I was being *too generous* in even saying that he apologized.
        • Step 1. how about visit all the forums where the posting took place and repair the damage by posting apologies, public confessions, etc.

          Step 2. come back here and ask what to do next. There will be more.

          Step 3. ????

          Step 4. Profit!

        • Re:"Responsibility" without accountability: too ea (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @06:39PM (#9221069) Homepage Journal
          He might fire someone, or at least publicly castigate them. Or he might announce some other amending action, like making his astroturfers offer some kind of service, on company time, to the forums they polluted. If he were smart, he'd apologize to the people who run those forums, and offer them JBoss software, or someone else's, and free integration. Then he'd get promotion, too. But what has he done? Nothing, except brag about how outspoken his company's people are.
          • Doc, you should be running an open source company, not this clown. You got it right, both from a moral standpoint, but from a business standpoint as well. Ethical behavior is such a rarity among corporations and CEOs these days, we get a little hint of it and our intial reaction is praise. But a moment's thought reveals the better solution, both ethically and financially. Yet these cretins in fancy suits can't see past their egos to the obvious choice: admit ya' done wrong, and make it right.

            Ya hear me, y
            • What if I were running a company selling services (not selling software), and I opened the source (eg. published on SourceForge) much of the software we developed for our operations. But I kept back some of the source of the software we distributed to our customers, to keep a competitive edge on our competition. Would that be bad?
              • No! Hell No, at least in my opinion, that is a smart move, benefits the open source community, and yourself. Win win, all around. Anyone who says you HAVE to give it all away is probably an astroturfer from the closed source side trying to make us look bad.

                Did Linus give away the stuff he did for TransMeta? Did any of us complain? Linus, dude, you sold out man! How can you even think about putting bread on your family's table, man! You're.. you're THE MAN, man! I'm getting my daddy's lawyer to sue you and

          • That's an excellent example of treating a problem as a potential opportunity to create something positive. Fleury et al did something to degrade not just their own credibility but that of the forums where the astroturf occurred. They did harm to those forums, and the obvious way to atone would be to do something that creates positive value for those who were harmed. Offer to give them free software or services, write some free articles, give them some inside access to information about product roadmaps or benchmarks, pick up part of the bandwidth tab...whatever. That would be true atonement, in contrast to the empty non-apology that was actually offered.

        • > what would you have him do? Seppuku?

          No, just clearly admit to what he personally did and apologize.

    • Re:Cynicism is (perhaps too) easy. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SpecBear ( 769433 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:58PM (#9220179)
      You're not cynical enough.

      The real problem is, there has been no admission of guilt, and nobody within the company has been pnuished so far as we know. The same corporate culture is in place. The previous article that revealed the astroturfing campaign gave the impression that the practice was widespread and reached the highest levels of the organization. Even if we take the pledge at face value, all we have is the promise that this particular dishonest practice will stop. In short, JBoss will desist not because they believe that astroturfing is dishonest and wrong, but because they were caught and it makes for bad publicity. The employees will see this, and they'll jump at the next opportunity that pops up. They'll just be a little more careful.

      In that context, this pledge does nothing give me any faith in JBoss' integrity. Here's what Marc Fleury should have done:
      • Openly and honestly admit all of the details of what happened
      • Acknowledge and denounce any transgressions
      • Apologize for creating/tolerating a corporate environment that encouraged large scale deception
      • Fire the most egregious offenders
      • Establish and publish a company policy that governs how employees present themselves when posting on public message boards with clear penalties defined for violators
      • Really take responsibility: resign and allow someone else to come in to rebuild trust in JBoss


      • Until something more substantial happens in response to this incident, JBoss won't be on my list of vendors to consider.
    • It sounds like they had been posting things under pseudonyms primarily to avoid giving the impression that what they were saying was an official JBoss position or giving their opinions unjustified clout due to the reputation of their software, in a misplaced attempt at tact or something. When people complained, he realized that everything they were accused of saying, they would be willing to take credit for.

      I expect that they'll demonstrate their conformance to the new policy by mocking WebLogic's standar
    • I think you're right... they're in a bit of a tight situation right now, from a "services" perspective. That being said, I don't think that this will have any effect whatsoever on the use of their technology.

      Astroturfing or not, at the end of the day I make my decision to use (or not) JBoss technology based on exactly that... their technology. (And my requirements, which kind of goes without saying).

      I've compared it with a number of other technologies, both commercial and open source, and I find it to b

  • Not concerned with jboss. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Captain_Frisk ( 248297 ) <captain_frisk@@@bootless...org> on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:42PM (#9219331) Homepage
    I'm more concerned with less intelligent companies who read this article and thought... Fake posts on the internet. What a great idea. While Astroturfing has always been around, mainstream articles about it are only going to give the un-enlightened new ideas.

  • Or.. we'll do a better job (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vluther ( 5638 ) <vidNO@SPAMluther.io> on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:43PM (#9219335) Homepage Journal
    of not getting caught..

    • That was my thought...they violated the Eleventh Commandment.
    • to not engage in the practice from work, but use your home PC's.

    • Sun Grid Engine uses astroturf as well (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The SGE poster is all but banned from the Beowulf mailing list, but still occasionally get through on the Bioclusters mailing list.

      It takes a few postings before you start to wonder why a poster is both posing as a delighted end user and has access to pre-release versions. When you see that they only post about one product, it's pretty clear what is going on.
      • That's not proof, that's conjecture. Closer to proof would be comparing ip addresses.

        I'm not saying it's not, just that someone being a happy end user and having access to pre-release software and being happy with it isn't any indication.

        I've been in this situation before with other companies. Especially if you're a big client, you'll get access to new releases sooner. If you're a big client of a new technology, you're generally happy with it.

        I can see it happening where some satisfied customers wo

  • JBoss VS weblogic (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I hate to start a war but I am not sure why would anyone use weblogic when JBOSS is such great J2EE container. I think Redhat, Suse should include JBOSS in AS market of their CD.
  • ...is hereby banned at Slashdot, starting with me.

  • JBoss (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:48PM (#9219404)
    Meet the new JBoss... Same as the old.

  • Bullshit! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It was an economic benefit for them to astroturf.. and now that they've been caught it's an economic liability(not to mention sleazy and embarassing) and so of course now they promise to be as pure as the driven snow.. utter crap. Nothing here but greedy people changing there tune to whatever is most profitable, if you have a choice then don't support JBoss.

  • ..perhaps this will set a needed precedent -- if so the whole silly controvery will have been worth it.

  • What a loss! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mothra the III ( 631161 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:53PM (#9219454)
    One of my favorite things to see in these forums is when some moron tries to market their product in this way and is immediately exposed. The resulting flames directed at the jackass provide some of the most entertaining reading you see on the internet. Makes my day every time.
  • I thought Astroturf 0.9 was the new Mozilla browser.

  • What is astroturfing? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those of us who associate astroturf with football stadiums.

    • It's... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mz6 ( 741941 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:02PM (#9219552) Journal
      Here is a definition... [thefreedictionary.com].

      A quick blurb..
      "A "grassroots" action or campaign is one that is started spontaneously, and is largely sustained, by private persons, as opposed to politicians, corporations, or public relations firms; a "grassroots" campaign comes about because of the popular feelings of some mass of people, as opposed to being the creature of the powerful.

      "Astroturfing", then, is a campaign crafted by politicians or spin-doctors, but in such a way as to appear it's the result of popular feeling rather than crafty manipulation by political or corporate elites".



    • Astroturfing is when you plant fake testimonials for your product in public places.

      The term is a spoof of the term grassroots. Grassroots support for a product springs naturally from the public - astroturf is made to look like real grassroots, but it's fake.
    • ...decrying astroturfing and the injuries it causes players, so they vowed never to do it again.

  • JBoss is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Phidoux ( 705500 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:55PM (#9219470) Homepage
    ... really... Oooops! Here comes the boss!

    [backspace][backspace][backspace][backspace]
  • BTW, Rickard Oberg and Cameron Purdy posted the article on JDJ's site before linuxworld got to it...

  • Wow... (Score:4, Funny)

    by avalys ( 221114 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:56PM (#9219482)
    That's quite a headline.

    At first I thought "Fleury" might be some kind of wacko term for a PR position, like "ombudsman".
    • At first I thought "Fleury" might be some kind of wacko term for a PR position, like "ombudsman".

      Ombudsman has its roots in Swedish, where it literally means "commission man", or something like that. But yes, it still sounds like a made-up word.

    • At first I thought "Fleury" might be some kind of wacko term for a PR position, like "ombudsman".

      "Ombudsman" is not a "wacko term" where I come from. However, an organization I'm associated with has an "ombuds office." Apparently the -man suffix was criminally sexist or something. I'd like to make a sarcastic comment, but the situation what I call pre-ridiculed--anything I said couldn't be as funny as the situation I'm commenting on.

      This seems to occur frequently in politics. . . .

      "Fleury" sounds li

  • notice what's missing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the quick brown fox ( 681969 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:57PM (#9219492)
    The words "admit", "regret", "apologize", or "sorry".

    I want to give the JBoss folks the benefit of the doubt, and I'm sure many others in the Java/J2EE community want to, too... but they just keep making it so damn hard.

  • "starting with me"? (Score:3, Funny)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:58PM (#9219499)
    "'Astroturfing' is hereby banned at JBoss, starting with me."

    Does that mean he was doing it?

  • No Apology There - Saves 10M funding? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fastdecade ( 179638 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:59PM (#9219521)
    To save you some effort, here's a summary of Fleury's speech:

    Introduction: I've been accused of astroturfing.

    Middle: JBoss is great, JBoss rocks, JBoss has great developers
    ...
    JBoss is King, long reign JBoss, love the JBoss.

    Conclusion: OK, no more astroturfing.
    Not once does he explain why it was done, but then he hardly even touches on the issue.

    Perhaps a direct apology would see the $10M VC be yanked from under Fleury's schitzophrenic hands?

  • Astromud (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RLW ( 662014 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:05PM (#9219583)
    So, would fake posts which detract from a competitor's product be astromudding ?

    Like "Open source is a cancer...." etc. ?

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:08PM (#9219621)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

  • Not an apology (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JohnGrahamCumming ( 684871 ) * <slashdot@jgc.oERDOSrg minus math_god> on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:14PM (#9219687) Homepage Journal
    Even the apology makes Fleury look bad. Instead of actually admitting that it happened, and apologizing and then promising that it wont happen again, he instead makes a grand gesture of saying that astroturfing is bad and isn't acceptable at JBoss.

    Dude, we already knew it was unethical, we didn't need you to tell us. If this stuff was going on in your company then (a) admit it, (b) apologize.

    But I'm glad that this whole thing came out in public, because the practice itself and the lame-ass apology speaks volumes about the integrity of the JBoss group.

    John.

  • Yes, folks, it's true. Ever since I started using POPFile [sf.net] I've been surrounded by some of the most beautiful women in the world, and next week I am marrying the Olsen twins. It's all down to POPFile, and my email is sorted automatically!!!

    Oops, I guess I should have click the "Post Anonymously" button.
    • So, do you work at SCO? Just wondering because you mentioned marrying 2 women (and twins, too!), and Utah is about the only place in the U.S that might let a bigamist off with a nod. Of course, since it's the Olsen twins, you just might be able to get sympathy beer for taking not one, but two, for the team...

  • Still more options.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by njcoder ( 657816 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:24PM (#9219784)
    This is just plain embarrassing and should have been responded to better.

    Sometimes you have to admit you've done something stupid outright, which they didn't really do initially.

    Kind of a historical trend for JBOSS. I find a lot of what they say misleading. The professional, in "professional open source" must mean something about heavy marketting as in talking a lot of crap weather it's true or not.

    Just like the number of downloads as if that's a useful way of determining market share.

    Also the big hype over Sun not certifying them. I'm sorry, it takes time and money to go through the certification process.... don't cry poor and then get 10million in VC money. Especially don't make up crap about how Sun doesn't want an open source j2ee server when it's really about money. Sun will certify any one that pays for certification and passes.

    Speaking of which.... If they passed I'm sure I would hav eheard about it. Any one know if they ever got certified? Maybe all that yamming about being completely J2EE compliant and Sun just trying to hold them back was just that... talk.

    It's a shame. Good idea, good way of implementing it with good training seminars (I hear), but there will be other open source options soon that don't try and diverge away from the J2EE spec like JBOSS does. A free, as in beer, J2EE server is already available that has passed certifiaction testing. Sun's own Sun ONE Application Server 8 Platform Edition is free to download, develop, deploy in production and redistribute. It's really stripped down to make it light and you can really only deploy one instance on it per server but for a lot of people that's enough.

    Also, the Apache team has a much better history and more momentum as a whole. Geronimo will really be a big problem for JBoss.

  • Is this headline trying to bypass spam filters? (Score:4, Funny)

    by pestie ( 141370 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:24PM (#9219786)
    JBoss's Fleury Abjures Astroturfing

    Is it just me, or does this headling read exactly like the random words in spam designed to bypass spam filters?

    Heh... Just an observation. You may now proceed to mod me -1 Offtopic.

  • What? (Score:3, Informative)

    by nherc ( 530930 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:29PM (#9219838) Journal
    Truthfully, how many people had more 1/4 of a clue what this story title meant?

    Okay:
    JBoss (is Java Server software and a company)
    Fleuy (No idea, a guy who works at aforesaid company?)
    Abjures (what? is this spelled right? after a quick google/dictionary.com lookup it means: 1. To renounce under oath; forswear. 2. To recant solemnly; repudiate: abjure one's beliefs.)
    Astroturfing (ah, I've heard this around /. before, but it slips my mind as to the exact definition, quick lookup: astroturfing n. The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant `concerned citizens', paid opinion pieces, and the formation of grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group (astroturf is fake grass; hence the term). This term became common among hackers after it came to light in early 1998 that Microsoft had attempted to use such tactics to forestall the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust action against the company.)

    Wow, that was a lot of work and I still can't put it together nor do I care to after all of that work as it seem quite boring anyway. Damn, geek elitiest with your word-of-the-day calendars!

  • Wha? (Score:4, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:32PM (#9219872) Homepage Journal
    "JBoss's Fleury Abjures Astroturfing"

    Man, if I'm going to keep reading Slashdot, I'm going to have to embiggen my vocabulary.

  • Admissions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by scubabear ( 598890 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:39PM (#9219955)
    For the record, I e-mailed several JBossers on this, and two e-mailed me back. One admitted he'd done it outright and apologized (thank you for that). He claimed he was a lone wolf acting without corporate knowledge; I'm rather suspicious about _that_. The other also admitted he'd did it - and then went on and lambasted me with several pages of abuse, vitriol, and cursing. He danced around the policy issue. By "did it" I mean posting under fake-but-real-seeming names to promote their product, and to simultaneously attack competitors and critics of JBoss alike. The others have not responded. -Mike Spille

    • Re:Admissions (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 )
      Well scubabear, if you'd like to do something about it, how about posting a link to a log of this abuse, vitriol, and cursing, along with the persons assumed identity on the boards, and their real name if you have it.

      If JBoss refuses to point fingers within their company, lets do it for them.

  • Laying down the law is easier... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:43PM (#9219996) Homepage
    than following the law.

  • Astrowhatever... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Decameron81 ( 628548 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:51PM (#9220096)
    You may have heard about recent charges in online forums that some JBoss employees, including me, were personally involved in anonymous postings on developer sites, which I could deny, but I'll try to save my butt here by confusing you. The practice, known as "astroturfing", is wildly popular on sites like Slashdot that actually let you post as "anonymous coward". We at JBoss know this because everyone does that here. JBoss has the reputation as an in your face, straight up, tell it like it is company were we take advantage of any chance we get to promote ourselves and our products as if we were normal people. I personally don't need a mask to speak my mind and one thing I can't stand is two faced hypocrisy even though I really enjoyed doing it myself. This has made us many friends and a few critics... well ok many critics and little if any friends.

    As you may know, the open source community would not be what it is today -- a real challenge to traditional software models -- without the strong opinions and outspoken voices of the developers, developers like us who really enjoy their own voices. I myself am among these wonderful voices. But we do not always see eye to eye on the evolution of the open source movement, especially because most of the open source community doesn't like us anyway. Some prefer subsidized open source, whereby they work corporate jobs and contribute/moonlight on the side without getting a dime for all the sacrifice they put into it. Many others, including us at JBoss, prefer the "Professional Open Source" model, whereby it is our job to work on open source and free software all day long, all the time, while reading Slashdot especially. We all passionately believe in the standalone potential of professional open source. JBoss' growing traction in the enterprise market, our expansion of products and services beyond the original JBoss Application Server and our recent funding from VCs have intensified scrutiny on our community and company, for bad and worse.

    JBoss is transitioning as a company to deliver on our commitment to make open source a safe and viable alternative for companies such as yours, which could be our next customer if we could only force you to buy from us. We have hired the most talented developers - many of whom are innovators and lead developers of popular open source projects and can write up to 100 posts a minute. We provide them with the means to continue developing and support these products while creating value for our community and wealth for themselves. As a company we are growing rapidly to meet the expert professional services needs of our customers and partners and even for those who don't give a damn about us. We want to be role models for ALL open source developers around the world. To do so, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard and try not to get caught the next time. Our visibility and success puts our customers and partners in a situation where you expect and demand that employees of JBoss Inc. hold themselves to that higher standard. Let's all put the professional back in professional open source, because it was your fault too if we removed the professional from open source in the first place. "Astroturfing", as we all knew it, is hereby banned at JBoss, starting with me.

    Sincerely (most of all),

    Marc Fleury
    Founder, Chairman and CEO
    JBoss, Inc.
  • If they had used anonymous proxies, there wouldn't have been a problem.
  • Anyone else notice all of the RealNetworks plugs for Helix on newsgroups, message boards, and yes - slashdot?
  • A question to tehcnical professionals..

    When is the last freaking time you actually paid attntion to and responded to any anoynmous poster in any technical disucssion?

    sounds of crickets...

    This is a non story folks..

    • Re:huh? (Score:3, Informative)

      by cameronpurdy ( 781944 )
      When is the last freaking time you actually paid attntion to and responded to any anoynmous poster in any technical disucssion? This isn't "anonymous coward" style anonymous, it's the creation of a plethora of accounts that have real-sounding names and participate in real conversations (sometimes with themselves.) For more information, refer to Rickard Oberg's blog [jroller.com] and Mike Spille's blog [jroller.com]. (BTW - Rickard is one of the authors of JBoss.) (Just in case you didn't figure it out from my login, I'm the Cameron
  • Well since they cannot be adult enough to openly admit or deny the truth of the matter. I for one will avoid their company and products.

    So at this point they have no credibility by trying to weasel out of this like a slimy politician.

  • I don't see astroturfing as such a big deal.

    Isn't anyone who has contributed to an open source project technically astroturfing when they make pro-open source comments on Slashdot without revealing their participation. Isn't this true of closed source posters as well? Hell, even first-posters have their agenda.

  • From the subject ot the post (Score:3, Insightful)

    by manavendra ( 688020 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:44PM (#9220662) Homepage Journal
    Now JBoss's CEO has recanted: there will be no more fake posts from JBoss staffers, he says
    So that means he admits there has been fake posts - well at least that's an acceptance finally!
  • Isn't astroturf just another form of "Guerilla marketing"?

    If so, why is it OK when Guy Kawasaki [garage.com] and the folks at Apple do it, and not OK when JBoss does it? I remember a lot of pleas on the EvangeList [wired.com] to do just the same thing on bulletin boards, etc. One tactic was to encourge people to write to little boutique software shops and encourage them to develop Mac versions. This may cause someone to spend 1000s (or millions) of dollars developing a product that there's no real market for, because the Maccies m

  • From the article... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mikolas ( 223480 )
    The practice, known as "astroturfing", is wildly popular on sites like Slashdot that actually let you post as "anonymous coward".

    I think it is a different thing to use fake identities in order to make your product look better than it is and discrediting the critics than simply posting as anonymous. Anyone can take comments from an AC with a grain of salt, but occasional readers do not have the capability to understand that a person behind fake identity is essentially fake and astroturfing. I for one only
  • There is nothing wrong with astroturfing when what you are saying is true.

    JBoss has the best application server on the face of the planet.

    They also have the most affordable application server.

  • Did anyone actually *read* his "apology"? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From Fleury's letter : I personally don't need a mask to speak my mind and one thing I can't stand is two faced hypocrisy

    Come on. This guy has been caught astroturfing and his idea of an apology is to deny the obvious and proclaim his distaste of hypocrisy in the same sentence!!!

    We knew he was astroturfing, now we know he is a uber-hypocrit and a regular moron too.

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