Technology news and Jobs 
linux.conf.au Is the Linux Foundation allergic to the media?
linux.conf.au Is the Linux Foundation allergic to the media? | Is the Linux Foundation allergic to the media? |
|
| by Sam Varghese | |
| Friday, 17 October 2008 | |
|
Page 1 of 2   
Featured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
The event did not get much publicity. Not surprising at all, when one considers that the media were not allowed within 100 yards of the place. Those who did try to attend - like Sean Michael Kerner who writes a blog for internetnews.com - were told that "attendance is limited to end users, kernel developers and LF member vendors only." Kerner made a valid point at the end of his blog entry : "While I understand that there are times when closed door sessions are necessary - as a technology journalist I also must always see openness and transparency as being of paramount importance. With a closed door event, my first question will always be - what aren't they telling me?" The Foundation has form in this business of trying to keep out reporters. In April this year, it held its second annual collaboration summit with industry and the media was banned from entry for two-thirds of the summit. The Foundation tried to generate its own positive spin on the event by using its own staff to write an anodyne blog - which tells you a great deal about the limited knowledge it has about publicity. Some well-known FOSS writers like Joe Barr criticised this bid to exclude the media - but links to such critical articles were conspicuously absent from the Foundation's website. I wrote to Jim Zemlin, the head of the foundation, to find out what rationale he had for barring entry to the media for the October 13 and 14. After reading his answers, I would like to borrow a phrase which the American talk show host David Letterman used after Republican presidential candidate John McCain stood him up about three weeks back - "it's beginning to smell a little." Zemlin's first reason for keeping the media away was apparently a lack of space. "First there are only so many seats in the room. Priority was given to end users and developers and even then we had to turn people away." I don't know - perhaps some of those media people have awfully big bottoms and require three or four chairs each. It's the first time I've heard this excuse in 30 years of reporting in three countries. You can't say there aren't innovative minds around the Linux kernel. And maybe, just maybe, they don't have big enough venues in New York city to accommodate all these people and the media. Yes, that could be it. |
| < Next story in category | Previous story in the category > |
|---|
