These days, one of the more widely debated questions seems to be: where do you stand on Sun? Is Sun good, evil, or have they simply not decided yet?

Simon Phipps made an interesting blog entry regarding 'framing' of debates. As I've been thinking about the recent eruption of flames in blogs all over the web surrounding Sun recently, I figured I should join in the fun. Without further ado, here is my own take on the debates.

Who profits most from the current Sun vs. the World shouting match?

One thing that had me wondering last week, as the blogging conflict between Sun and the coopetition made their way through the media was: who profits from it?

When you look at the speculation around the OOo status after the publication of the Microsoft agreement, for example, and step back from the context of the current shouting match between Sun and, among others, Red Hat, who is the one that actually profits from casting doubt around the future of OpenOffice.org? Not Red Hat or Novell, as they ship it, and have a few hackers of their own working on it. Not Sun, obviously, as they are the driving force behind OOo, and are doing a very good job on it. Neither IBM, HP, nor Apple have products competing with OOo, and for some of them OOo is the leading full-featured office suite on their platforms so their interest in fudding it is questionable.

The only company that profits from someone throwing mud on OOo is Microsoft.

Aren't Linux vendors all evil and greedy anyway?

When you step out of the context of the current shouting match on street credibility between GNU/Linux vendors, who is the company that profits from GNU/Linux vendors throwing mud upon each other? If the mud that sticks turns out to be something along the lines of 'Red Hat is a bunch of greedy, incompetent, secret customer lock-in fanatics that siphoon off free labor, Sun is a bunch of greedy flip-flopping pseudo-open Microsoft pawns, IBM is a bunch of greedy Java-robbing thieves that publicly pretend to be golden Linux boys while sharpening the knives for Red Hat and Novell' then that leaves one company with a lot of free, negative advertising for their own product line over the apparently equally evil competition.

Why invest in GNU/Linux when all the vendors do their best to mutually assure you that they are all just a bunch of greedy would-be-Microsofts out there looking for ways to lock-in and milk the customer? You might as well buy the real thing for less if you have to pay the 'lock-in' tax anyway [1].

Microsoft have changed their tactics to divide and conquer

I have no idea if Microsoft is really 'framing' the current debates in the communities. But when you look around the accusations being thrown around, the only company that seems to profit from the aura of uncertainity being fabricated around GNU/Linux, OpenOffice.org, Java or Mono is the convicted monopolist with a lot of experience in astroturfing and FUD.

My own theory is that after failing to slash off the hydra's head at the source using SCO, Microsoft has switched over to trying to split the communities into isolated, quarelling fractions. Good old divide and conquer. And it's too easy to fall for it, as it works great with the frankness common among free software developers.

The higher art of trolling is not to postulate that 'Al Gore is a liar'. It is to ask seemingly innocent questions like 'Is Al Gore a liar?' and spice them up with a few quotes out of context, in order to get people to waste their time discussing that question. If a troll is a good one, he'll add some oil into the fire, by later asking questions like 'Did Al Gore really invent the internet?'. It's easy to draw the parallels to the current debates around Sun in the communities.

I'd say the GNU/Linux community[2] is getting trolled big time from outside. The pattern seems to be to give a bait to Sun to elicit an energetic[3] response, then to spoonfeed the response to other GNU/Linux vendors to get them to bash Sun, and to continue in cricles till the flames finally fan out.

Be transparent. Do good. Ignore trolling & heat.

As long as Sun's PR and execs leave something about their commitment to the communities open to interpretation, the trolls will have an easy job baiting Sun about it.[4]

Please don't feed the trolls.

[1] The 'less' referes to Microsoft's TCO marketing campaign.

[2] Which obviously includes Sun.

[3] Depending where you stand, of course. If you are the receiving end, it may look much worse than it is. If you are at the giving end, it may look much better than it is. If you are impartial, the resulting flamefest doesn't leave a good impression on either participating party anyway.

[4] Two points for Sun to work on: please improve your PR to be more transparent to 'the communities' you are in, and please try to work on the defensive attitude as that makes you a very, very easy target to troll.