Hi all.
This effort is starting to generate a lot of interest in the general
press community. The press are always looking for a story with a new
cutting edge, they also want to be the first to release a story.
Sometimes diligence gets lost when that happens. Press also _love_
conflict and tension. It makes for more stories. :(
The press also do not understand the Open Source development community
very well either. They need name recognition to make a story seem
credible. A story about a bunch of folks slinging code doesn't make a
terribly interesting story for the main stream press world. Because of
that, and because Red Hat is involved with helping the clustering
effort, our name is going to get brought up in *lot* of articles
related to clustering. The more respectable journalists will contact
people in the story to verify facts, less reputable journalists will
simply write a story with limited fact checking.
Whenever I'm contacted by press, I decide right away if I have my
community hat on or my Red Hat hat on. If the article is about a
product or a partnership that we have, then my Red Hat hat goes on and
I talk from the company point of view. I *always* make it very clear
that we are deriving our software from the community, of which, we are
a part.
If I am going to talk about the community, like with the recent ZDNet
article, then I make sure to speak as just a player in the community
and I work hard to make sure all the community players are mentioned.
Red Hat is a community member and as such, I'll do my very best to make
sure that we are equal to every other player out there, small or large.
If any of you feel that I'm somehow handling this very badly, please
contact me and tell me. Also, if you feel things come out in press
sounding badly, please contact me before you start screaming about
forks and Red Hat == evil, etc.
One final thing to mention, journalists like stories that are readable,
they will trim and modify things to be more interesting. A good
journalist does that while keeping everything factually correct, a
poor journalist will fail here. Also, after the journalist is done
with his/her story, then there are copy editors and final editors that
trim and "adjust" stories even more. So, the moral of the story is,
press articles are supposed to be interesting, many times at the
expense of factual truth and completeness.
Mike
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Wangsmo Red Hat, Inc
"I've seen this before in Montana! Its snowing, nobody lick a flag
pole" -- Peggy Hill
This effort is starting to generate a lot of interest in the general
press community. The press are always looking for a story with a new
cutting edge, they also want to be the first to release a story.
Sometimes diligence gets lost when that happens. Press also _love_
conflict and tension. It makes for more stories. :(
The press also do not understand the Open Source development community
very well either. They need name recognition to make a story seem
credible. A story about a bunch of folks slinging code doesn't make a
terribly interesting story for the main stream press world. Because of
that, and because Red Hat is involved with helping the clustering
effort, our name is going to get brought up in *lot* of articles
related to clustering. The more respectable journalists will contact
people in the story to verify facts, less reputable journalists will
simply write a story with limited fact checking.
Whenever I'm contacted by press, I decide right away if I have my
community hat on or my Red Hat hat on. If the article is about a
product or a partnership that we have, then my Red Hat hat goes on and
I talk from the company point of view. I *always* make it very clear
that we are deriving our software from the community, of which, we are
a part.
If I am going to talk about the community, like with the recent ZDNet
article, then I make sure to speak as just a player in the community
and I work hard to make sure all the community players are mentioned.
Red Hat is a community member and as such, I'll do my very best to make
sure that we are equal to every other player out there, small or large.
If any of you feel that I'm somehow handling this very badly, please
contact me and tell me. Also, if you feel things come out in press
sounding badly, please contact me before you start screaming about
forks and Red Hat == evil, etc.
One final thing to mention, journalists like stories that are readable,
they will trim and modify things to be more interesting. A good
journalist does that while keeping everything factually correct, a
poor journalist will fail here. Also, after the journalist is done
with his/her story, then there are copy editors and final editors that
trim and "adjust" stories even more. So, the moral of the story is,
press articles are supposed to be interesting, many times at the
expense of factual truth and completeness.
Mike
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Wangsmo Red Hat, Inc
"I've seen this before in Montana! Its snowing, nobody lick a flag
pole" -- Peggy Hill