Forum OpenACS Q&A: Red Hat Claiming ACS Tcl "Customers" for Red Hat CCM

1: Red Hat Claiming ACS Tcl "Customers" for Red Hat CCM

Posted by Roberto Mello on 09/24/02 09:54 PM

At http://www.redhat.com/software/ccm/customers/mit.html Red Hat
claims that:

"Leaders within Sloan that were familiar with Red Hat looked at the
Red Hat Community System (CCM) as a software platform for the project."

It also claims that Al Aessa said the following in 2000:

"Implementing the CCM Education Solution adds significant value to
Sloan by making available an elegant information portal for our
students. Our next goal is to use CCM tools to support faculty
research and collaboration. We also envision extending the SloanSpace
to deliver online education to executives and our alumni,"

How did Al Aessa mention "CCM" in 2000 if that product didn't exist
back then?

To me that sounds extremely dirty. Sure Red Hat acquired ArsDigita,
but AFAIK with the exception of the World Bank, none of their
so-claimed "customers" ever used the product known as Red Hat CCM (ACS
Java). Claiming that they not only do so, but that they "evaluated"
extensively Red Hat CCM is a fat lie to me.

Is this even legal?

To finish it all, an "open source" company
advertises false clients with screenshots of Internet Explorer on a
Macintosh. Some "open" source.

2: Response to Red Hat Claiming ACS Tcl "Customers" for Red Hat CCM (response to 1)

Posted by John Holroyd on 09/24/02 10:45 PM

It is indeed very sad Roberto, hopefully they will remove such a blatant mendacity from their blurb, or at least correct it to read 'ACS (now CCM).' As for its legality... It all seems very Orwellian to me, the Red Hat 'department of truth' at work perhaps.

3: Response to Red Hat Claiming ACS Tcl "Customers" for Red Hat CCM (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 09/25/02 12:48 AM

Maybe it's not supposed to be visible until April Fool's Day ...

4: Response to Red Hat Claiming ACS Tcl "Customers" for Red Hat CCM (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Hwang on 09/25/02 02:37 AM

This is what happens when companies get aquired. I'm working at HP now, which used to be Compaq, which used to be Tandem. When Compaq aquired Tandem, they also acquired the right the claim that their machines ran all the major stock exchanges. When HP acquired Compaq, they started making the same claim.

However, the difference between that and what RedHat seems to be doing is that in our case, though the "owner" changed, the hardware, software and people didn't. What RedHat acquired isn't what Sloan uses. What Sloan uses is what ArsDigita threw away to start over and create what RedHat bought.

If you wanted to give RedHat the benefit of the doubt, you could assume that they meant to say that ACS is really about the datamodel and not whether or not it uses TCL or Java, but I'd like to hear that directly from the horse's mouth.

5: Response to Red Hat Claiming ACS Tcl "Customers" for Red Hat CCM (response to 1)

Posted by Roberto Mello on 09/25/02 03:09 AM

Well that, and they have quotes from people saying that they "evaluated CCM". It's probably legal to do what they are doing (doing a s/ACS/CCM/) but it's probably not legal to misquote people.

Legalese apart, it is unethical to me.

6: Response to Red Hat Claiming ACS Tcl "Customers" for Red Hat CCM (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 09/25/02 12:49 PM

I pinged Al Essa (thanks for the heads up Roberto) and from his rather succinct response I think it's fair to say that Red Hat will be hearing from him. Whether they do anything or not is another issue.

Whatever stretch they want to take on having acquired aD and whatever one thinks of this being a legitimate marketing tactic, editing a direct quote as they've done is not cool.

7: Response to Red Hat Claiming ACS Tcl "Customers" for Red Hat CCM (response to 1)

Posted by Tom Wunderlich on 09/25/02 09:12 PM

Thank you all for pointing out this error. Sometimes the search and replace technique fails to get the job done. We will remove the page from our site today. Apologies for the inconvenience.

8: Response to Red Hat Claiming ACS Tcl "Customers" for Red Hat CCM (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 09/26/02 02:07 AM

Thanks, Tom, when I first raised this with Al Essa I told him that it looked like an overly aggressive use of search and replace. I'm sure your prompt action is appreciated by everyone.

9: Response to Red Hat Claiming ACS Tcl "Customers" for Red Hat CCM (response to 1)

Posted by Roberto Mello on 09/26/02 02:54 AM

Tom, thank you for your clarification. With a few corrections and clarifications -- such as mentioning that what those sites use is a predecessor to CCM -- you could fix the situation.