Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Additionally, Byfield once got involved in a radio show in which Schestowitz was supposed to debate the GNOME Foundation media spokesman Jeff Waugh at a time when GNOME's stance on OOXML was very much in the news and being questioned. And Byfield clearly came down on the opposite side to Schestowitz.
In the article on linux.com, which was headlined "BoycottNovell: Champion of freedom or den of paranoia", Byfield got hold of a few so-called supporters of the website and a few who don't like it.
His game fell apart slightly when tacking those who oppose the site for he called on Waugh - who, as has been mentioned, is a known foe of Schestowitz. Indeed, quotes from Waugh occupy a fairly big part of Byfield's article.
This is subterfuge at its best - if he wanted to attack the site, all he had to do was to say it out straight and go for the jugular. But no, Byfield likes to appear balanced. Or maybe he wants to appear fair and balanced - like Fox News.
BoycottNovell does not adhere to the highest standards. It sometimes carries badly researched news. It sometimes makes accusations that are later shown to be incorrect. Of Byfield it can be said that he has defended the Microsoft-Novell deal, defended OOXML and also changed his stance on Mono, the contentious open source effort to produce a clone of Microsoft's .NET development environment.
The good thing about the BoycottNovell site is that when Schestowitz does get something wrong and it is pointed out, he generally makes a mea culpa right there on the site. I haven't seen any such inclination from Byfield.
BoycottNovell is neither a beacon of freedom nor a den of paranoia. I don't think it ever aimed to be either. But then no website is a beacon of freedom - we are not fighting world wars here. BoycottNovell is a site which is used to propagate a certain point of view - and if you disagree, then agree to do so and behave like a mature adult.
Nobody who styles themselves as a journalist - Byfield is not one, he is merely a writer - should ever misuse the access one has to technology news websites to try and attack people whom one dislikes. However, if someone has done something which is against FOSS and against segments of the FOSS community, attack what he or she has done.
But do not try to style it as some kind of balanced writing. People within the community can easily make out what the writer's real intentions are.
David Bass
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