Groklaw — Don't Go Home, Go Big 230
jfruhlinger writes "You may have caught PJ's Christmas Day post on Groklaw, expressing her anger and frustration that, after she helped save Novell's Unix patents from SCO's clutches, Novell turned around and sold many of those patents to an open source-unfriendly coalition. She's feeling at a crossroads and wondering what Groklaw should become. Brian Proffitt has a suggestion: a bigger, more community-oriented site."
A patent consortium (Score:5, Interesting)
No, seriously. Groklaw should become a patent consortium run by open source software folks. It should use its resources to fund patent applications by open source projects and should hold those patents collectively so that they can be used defensively if any of the member projects are attacked by software patents.
Censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
So long as PJ continues to censor posts she doesn't like the site has limited value.
Ganty
Groklaw is pure FUD and BS, PJ bans disagreements (Score:0, Interesting)
Groklaw posts pure FUD and BS.
PJ will ban ANYONE who disagrees with her BS agenda.
If you find factual information that totally flies in the face of the lies she posts, she bans you for that too.
Groklaw stopped being useful about 3 months after it started.
seriously.
"move along, nothing to see here"
Re:Groklaw is pure FUD and BS, PJ bans disagreemen (Score:0, Interesting)
Damned straight. I used to post on Groklaw, but after being banned a few times as an "astroturfer" because I disagreed with her conclusions, I got fed up and stopped following the site.
She's managed to drive lots of useful contributors away because they don't agree with her. She's not a journalist, she's an editorialist. She's certainly entitled to her opinions, but to call herself a journalist does a disservice to real journalists. (Unfortunately these days, most people who think they're journalists aren't because they editorialize - so there are very few actual journalists left).
It bothers me greatly that her site is hosted by a journalism school, yet they seem to have no idea that she's got a long history of suppressing any and all dissent and those who disagree with her.
Her disillusionment has been growing for years (Score:2, Interesting)
Originally I think PJ tried and others that helped her would try to be impartial and for the most part succeeded or apologized when they realized they were slanting things. The apologies got more and more sarcastic as SCO and other associated groups got worse and worse. I know from personal experience that posts pointing out slant or proposing more reasoned interpretations would be pulled from their site. Initially it was people obviously from known IPs (or so PJ said), then I got censored a few times asking her to de-rant some comments a few years ago. I got pretty jaded with her community and stopped logging in or posting, though I usually still read it for the 'news' content as much as there is. I hope she keeps going and maybe does realize their aren't really heroes and villians in corporations (though most individual FOSS developers are heroes even if they do it because they have a huge ego).
I think this disillusionment of PJ's happens with many people within FOSS as it is a worthy cause for the self-righteous as much as the anti-MSFT, but things are always murky and get increasingly disappointing as you get older and other people turn your dreams and work into their money. All companies are out for themselves, if you are lucky they may give a shit about their customers and employees (but few do). Hell, I was a significant contributor to a Linux distro for years, and now I work for MSFT. I honestly want MSFT to succeed for many reasons besides self-interest - MSFT gives a real crap about customer privacy unlike its major competitors, cares 100% about ISVs as they make its market (developers dev...), will eventually produce standardized software which can be 'cloned' and made portable, it has to compete more honestly than most big companies (which is why it attacks through other groups and politics and also usually easily exposed). And sadly, I looked at the future Google wants, the one that Apple wants, the one Oracle will stumble into, and the one MSFT wants. The MSFT one is the most open with the most changes for other people to succeed. (This assumes IBM and Red Hat continue to keep selling Oracle's Java and so will merge with it eventually).
Coolidge is underrated (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never understood why Coolidge was considered a poor president. His tenure seems exceptional and he remained popular even up to his resignation. His actions on civil rights were particularly enlightened, even though thwarted by Democrats in the legislature. Perhaps people don't like him cause he was a Republican. Who knows?
Re:No thanks -- oh for goodness sake (Score:3, Interesting)
If PJ regularly featured tough challenges to her worldview and responded to them with reason and nuance, then she might be credited with merely trying to create a high S/N discussion site. The impression I get from many posters to this discussion is that she simply removes the side of the debate she doesn't agree with. I'm not capable of proving that's the case. Any evidence of that would be deleted from her site. Lacking any transparency in moderation it's difficult to just take her word that nothing she deleted had any value to begin with. Those charging her with tyrannical moderation seem to be disaffected supporters more than sockpuppet trolls. There could be a conspiracy there, but we'd need evidence to believe that. Maybe if all the post IP addresses came from Darl McBride's house that would be believable. Otherwise I regard it as fanciful.