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FUD: /fuhd/, n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company:
“FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people
instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering
[Amdahl] products.” The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go
with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit
coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would
happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the
future of competitors' equipment or software. See
IBM. After 1990 the term FUD was associated
increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has
become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a
competitive weapon. [In 2003, SCO sued IBM in an action which, among other things,
alleged SCO's proprietary control of Linux. The SCO
suit rapidly became infamous for the number and magnitude of falsehoods
alleged in SCO's filings. In October 2003, SCO's lawyers filed a memorandum
in which they actually had the temerity to link to the web version of
this entry in furtherance of their claims. Whilst we
appreciate the compliment of being treated as an authority, we can return
it only by observing that SCO has become a nest of liars and thieves
compared to which IBM at its historic worst looked positively
angelic. Any judge or law clerk reading this should surf through to
my collected resources on this
topic for the appalling details.—ESR]
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