Novell has been accused of many things over the years including clueless marketing, inattention to its best customers and
inappropriate acquisitions. But until last week, “spammer” was never a term applied to the company.
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Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of
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But a copyrighted story last week in the U.K.’s Platinax News accused Novell’s SuSE, as well as Ubuntu and Trustix Linux distributions
of being, in essence, spammers of their newsletters.
Platinax News bills itself as “- a site for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs, helping business online in the UK.” Platinax news declares
that it is intended to cover issues that may be of interest to small businesses in the United Kingdom.
The problem Platinax raised with the three Linux vendors was that it was “difficult for subscribers to their email lists to
opt out.” Platinax went on to state: “Key issues raised were that there was no clear unsubscribe option, and the unsubscription
process was user-unfriendly. This could lead to disgruntled subscribers perceiving themselves to be subject to unwanted emails.”
Well, even that seems very weak, but evidently the three vendors got a bit upset.
Within a few hours, Platinax had withdrawn the initial story and issued a retraction. In somewhat dissembling language, it stated: “it’s fair to say the item was clumsy in its language, and might have created
the perception that it was reporting Ubuntu, Trustix, and Suse as responsible for spam.” Not only might it have created that
impression but it did – with little ambiguity!
The apology went on to address Novell directly: “Platinax would especially like to apologise to Novell and users of Suse,
for incorrectly reporting that there was no obvious email opt out, when this was plainly incorrect.” Reading between the lines,
Platinax never actually read through an e-mail from Novell and just saw fit to tar it with the same brush used on the other
Linux distros.
