Protecting Charity

As I was reading the news this morning to stay in sync with the happenings of the tech world, I was really interested to see that Scott Beale, of Laughing Squid, was auctioning off one of the expensive Windows Vista Laptops that Microsoft has sent to popular bloggers, in an attempt to get their opinions. It created (an unnecessary) mini-scandal when MS did this. I think that the idea of Microsoft sending out nice laptops pre-loaded with Vista, before the release of Vista, is a good idea. I think it was poorly executed though. There was an uproar in the blogosphere that MS sent gifts to bloggers to bribe them, and then a further outrage that some bloggers would consider keeping the laptops. I found this especially interesting because I come to ReliaBid from Gartner, a firm that prides itself on analyst objectivity and has a very strict set of rules to assure that. I don't expect all bloggers to be purely objective, unless they declare themselves to be objective journalists. And even today, I'm sorry to say, it frequently feels like objective journalism, even, is somewhat dead. Microsoft sending computers? People accepting them? Not a big deal in most cases...

Rather than become embroiled in a debate, Scott chose to auction his notebook for charity. I think that is great. Not only am I a fan of the charity- the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), but I think this was a great way to turn the situation into one where all sides win. However, when I looked at the auction I was disappointed to see that there were apparently some fraudulent bids. I reached out to Scott and offered him ReliaBid's service free of cost, to help reduce bidding fraud and to get the EFF their donation quickly and without incident. We're happy to be helping out!

Comments

[james]

Could you define exactly what analytical objectivity is? Gartner refuses to put non-commercial open source products into magic quadrants and would love to understand how to get them to do so...

[Jonathan Rosen]

I'm not sure I'm the best authority to define what constitutes analyst objectivity. Gartner employs an Ombudsman in order to insure that Gartner reports are objective. More about the Ombudsman can be read at:
http://gartner.com/it/about/omb_overview.jsp

As far as I remember open source applications are included in research when appropriate. OpenOffice, StarOffice are a few that come to mind. However, you also have to keep in mind that Gartner research is written for an audience- the enterprise consumer. Non-commercial open source products, in my personal opinion, frequently lack the support mechanisms to make them a viable solution for enterprise usage in the first place, thereby making there coverage somewhat unnecessary for the enterprise audience. Hope this helps. -Jon