hmm. a pro-swpat group takes control of the media

Posted Mar 3, 2009 21:33 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
In reply to: hmm. a pro-swpat group takes control of the media by coriordan
Parent article: The Linux Foundation acquires Linux.com

Jim Zemlin is an effective manager, and he works effectively for the LF board, which mainly represents large companies. The LF charter is written to give board voting control to the largest members: Platinum up to 10, Gold 3, Silver 1, At-large up to 5. On the current board, representatives of software patent holders do outnumber the kernel hackers:

Larry Augustin (investor, former CEO, VA Linux Systems)

James Bottomley, Novell/LF Technical Advisory Board

Alan Clark, Novell

Wim Coekaerts, Oracle

Masahiro Date, Fujitsu

Frank Fanzilli (board member for several proprietary
software companies)

Doug Fisher, Intel

Dan Frye, IBM

Tim Golden, Bank of America

Hisashi Hashimoto, Hitachi

Brian Pawlowski, NetApp

Chris Schlaeger, AMD

Tsugikazu Shibata, NEC

Eric Thomas, Texas Instruments

Martin Whittaker, Hewlett-Packard

Christy Wyatt, Motorola

yes, that's what I'm afraid of

Posted Mar 4, 2009 15:01 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

I saw their board and their funders and that the fee structure means that the money from the eight Platinum members eclipses all other sources of income combined.

Their money comes, by a large majority, from a Who's Who of pro-software-patent lobbyists. They're only missing Microsoft.

This raises the important question of media: how will LF's editorial control influence linux.com's coverage of software patents?

my tone

Posted Mar 4, 2009 15:46 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Ah. You were more or less agreeing. I misread you post and though I had to defend my question :-)