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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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Within a few hours, Platinax had withdrawn the initial story and issued a retraction.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.
Over the years, one of the largest complaints about Novell and its marketing is that we rarely hear from them. Calling Novell “spammers” is almost ludicrous. Still, it did give me a chuckle.
Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found at Virtual Quill.
Kearns is the author of two Network World Newsletters: Windows Networking Strategies, and Identity Management. Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these respective addresses: windows@vquill.com, identity@vquill.com .
Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail.
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