Re: New York Times story (GNOME Foundation == OSF??)

[Brian Behlendorf <brian collab net>]

So, speaking as someone who has been misquoted more often than I believe I
have been correctly quoted, let me make two points:

a) Don't sweat the small stuff.  The main problem with the sentence below
is the proposition "its".  Well, OK, I don't know if this is Sun
pre-announcing something that should not be preannounced; but if the
problem is only in the "its", come on, that is a reporter being lazy, and
it clearly is something larger than just Sun if you read the whole
article.  It certianly reaffirms the need to make clear during the
announcement that the GNOME foundation is a collection of individuals and
companies working together, not just Sun or anyone else.

b) There is a skill to saying things the right way, that allow the lazy
reporters to at least stand a chance of not getting it wrong.

What should be more troubling is the statement:

  The Foundation will make a declaration to base GNOME office work on
  Sun's recently open-sourced StarOffice acquisition, openoffice.org. 

*THAT* is the part I don't know whether the decision has yet been made,
and I'd make sure if I were you that Sun didn't go around saying silly
things like that, if that wasn't a part of the announcement tomorrow.

As a final note, this brings up a good reason for the Gnome foundation to
have a PR agency that handles press relations, and can keep the press
activities of all the other Gnome-related announcements made by other
parties in line.  There is a *lot* of work involved in making sure
everyone is saying the same things at the same time, and not releasing
things early or stating something that's clearly incorrect.  The ASF has
used a PR agency for the last year or so and it's been of tremendous
help.  None of them are cheap though, ~$10K/month is a base base rate for
a good one.

	Brian

On 14 Aug 2000, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> Bart Decrem <bart@eazel.com> writes:
> 
> > no kidding.  that one's far-out as they say.
> > 
> > bart
> > 
> > 
> > Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> > 
> > >
> > > You think that's bad? Have a look at how the Register are telling
> > > it:
> > >
> > >    Sun sources tell us that it will unveil its "GNOME Foundation"
> > >    initiative at the San Jose LinuxWorld expo this week.
> > >
> > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/12552.html
> > >
> 
> 
> I don't suppose there's a chance of getting them to run a correction?