"Oracle has admitted to the court that it retains the frequently-cited Florian Mueller of the popular blog FOSS Patents as a consultant. The official disclosure comes a week after the judge in Oracle's lawsuit against Google took the extraordinary step of ordering both parties to reveal any paid journalists or bloggers on their payrolls. Both companies filed their responses today, and Mueller is the only person named in either filing." Google paid nobody. Also, if you're surprised by Mueller being paid by Oracle - I have a Paleis op de Dam to sell you.
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Being a paid consultant, and then running an industry analysis blog and posting about the details of a legal dispute involving one of your clients is highly unethical.
It really doesn't matter if you disclose that your paid by one of the parties, its still unethical. The minute you comment at all about a legal case your client is involved in you stopped doing analysis and started doing propaganda. He could have easily saved his reputation by simply recusing himself...
Florian Mueller is a paid whore. He may as well put that at the bottom of his bio.
Member since:2007-11-11
But which is worse, the paid whore or the paid troll?
Personally I'd rather deal with the paid whore where I know who they are whoring to (so I can avoid any articles involving their master) than deal with articles spammed all over the Internet by the likes of Nichols and Thurott who whole job it is to write the most flamebait articles possible to turn as much of the net into flamewars as they can to ratchet up their page views.
Member since:2007-03-06
Admiting being paing by Oracle only when hard-pressed to do so doesn't cut it.
He's publishing articles from a "patent expert" standpoint, and he should have added a notice about his relationship with Oracle in every article covering anything Oracle-related.
I know being a blogger doesn't make you a journalist, but if you'll be kinda pretending being one you could also adopt some journalism ethics.
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2006-01-25
On one hand, Mueller did admit to this himself back in April - so it isn't exactly news.
I think the fact that Oracle had paid shills, while Google had none, speaks volumes in and of itself.
On the other hand, voluntarily outing yourself as a paid whore does at least demonstrate a degree of honesty... But your still a paid whore.
If the guy had an ounce of ethics, he wouldn't be doing analysis on the details of an ongoing legal disputes when he is being paid as a consultant by one of the parties. You can be a consultant and an analyst at the same time, as long as you don't ever let one influence the other.
I know that nowadays no one considers analysts to be "ethical", but all it takes to change that is for them to start acting that way...
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"As for Google, the company flatly tells us that "no one on our side paid journalists, bloggers, or other commentators to write about this case." The actual statement filed with the court is a bit more vague, however. Google says it's never directly paid anyone to write about the case, but it has relationships with a number of institutions like universities, political organizations, and trade associations, all of whom might employ bloggers or journalists to advocate for certain positions."
Oh well, they said they don't evil so it has to be true.
Still, it's less easy to doubt Google than Oracle's donations to somebody who accepts the money, yet remains neutral.
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2005-07-06
and don't forget that most bloggers are earning money through adsense
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