How open source defends itself in the PR wars

At first, opposing candidates were shocked when Web users used the Web to fisk their latest campaign charges, often turning them back on the attacker inside the same news cycle.

They adapted, and eventually companies like Nominem will, too.

I offered snark in reaction to Nominem's attack on BIND as "legacy freeware". But it did not take long for the DNS community to offer more:

• Nominem was subject to DNS cache poisoning attacks open source alternatives were not.
• Nominem's Web server runs on Apache, which is open source.
• Nominem was founded to develop a version of BIND.

Nominem's PR people did the best they could under the circumstances, but they were Custer at Little Big Horn, surrounded and under constant fire.

Open source attacks tend to be like zombies in that they demand human sacrifices before they go away. The Skye executive who started this kerfluffle, Jon Shalowitz, (above) might want to avoid any open mics for a while.

Next time Jon and his fellow Stanford Business School alums get together for a chat he'll have a story for them.