On now on to a more positive note (My bias)

A friend chided me yesterday for taking a strident, shrill (and often unfair) tone against a range of companies. Given the respect I have for him, his comments gave me pause, and pushed me to reconsider some of the views I've expressed in this blog. I think it's time for a change. Not of my opinions - at least, not in all cases - but perhaps in how I express them. Given that it's Easter weekend, I suppose it's a

A friend chided me yesterday for taking a strident, shrill (and often unfair) tone against a range of companies. Given the respect I have for him, his comments gave me pause, and pushed me to reconsider some of the views I've expressed in this blog.

I think it's time for a change. Not of my opinions - at least, not in all cases - but perhaps in how I express them. Given that it's Easter weekend, I suppose it's an appropriate time for rebirth and renewal.

With this in mind, though, I think it's also important to elucidate some of my biases/perspectives/opinions. I'm a person and a participant in the market. I'm sometimes wrong. Perhaps often.

The goal of this blog is not to be a neutral perspective on the industry. I'm not a journalist and don't pretend to be neutral. But you may care to know what is informing my diatribes:

1. I don't believe the law should be used as a club. I am a lawyer. I went to law school. I think legal wrangling is the worst sort of competition.

Perhaps for this reason I take it personally when I see companies clubbing each other with lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits. You may have noticed that I'm generally a fan of Microsoft and its products, and its competition based on products. I despise its legal tactics, as well as those of SAP, Amazon, Oracle, etc. This isn't a bias I hold against any particular company. It's a bias I hold against a form of competitive posturing and jockeying.

Good things come from discussion. Bad things come from litigation. It's rare that litigation truly resolves anyone's problems.

I harp on Oracle's 'Unbreakable Linux' move so much because in a deeply personal way I am offended by it. I have no financial stake in Red Hat, other than that I view it as the bellwhether open source company and so dearly want it to succeed. I view Oracle's move as parasitic, though legal. Is it wrong, as per the open source licenses in question? No.

But ask John Roberts (SugarCRM) how he felt about vTiger taking SugarCRM's code, or other open source companies who have had their code borrowed by competitors (I have one good friend that is going through it right now, though it hasn't been picked up by the press yet), etc. Or ask Oracle how it felt about TomorrowNow's alleged theft of its documentation.