It makes a lot of difference, see how Florian gets treated by the crowd around here(not to mention the jabs at him in the article linked), in spite of coming clean about his affiliations with Oracle. There's a big perception by many here that PJ is impartial and independent, and a disclosure by PJ will show whether that's justified or not.
I don't think anybody is calling PJ impartial - she clearly takes sides. When PJ summarizes things as "Oracle/SCO's case has no merit" and the trial results in a loss for Oracle/SCO, that is evidence that PJ is a good reporter and analyst. It is not evidence of anything fishy about PJ's motives.
>There's a big perception by many here that PJ is impartial and independent, and a disclosure by PJ will show whether that's justified or not.
And? Either his data is correct and forthright or incorrect and misleading. It's quite possible to be biased as fuck and still report objective fact. Until such time as the data skews, I don't particularly care what flag he flies.
He is A) wrong and B) profits from being wrong by taking money from the people he is writing falsehoods about and C) tried to hide this astroturfing.
It may not be "murderer" or "child molester" evil, but it's still pretty unethical and it's unethical behavior done in the name of "FOSS". We have a right and responsibility to police our own.
His writing style tends to conflate facts and opinions moreso than PJ's does. He also sounds like a troll. The "we don't like this person" heuristic has been activated, and the fact that he's paid by Oracle is irrelevant.
Because Florian is all opinion, no material. I personally come to Groklaw for the exact and accurate coverage of original sources on these lawsuits, and its easy to ignore the commentary track.
I can't speak for others, but I don't think PJ is impartial or independent. We all know who she's rooting for in these cases and she doesn't try to hide it.
The reason PJ is respected here and in other places is because more often than not... she's right (especially from the perspective of helping programmers understand the foreign and alien legal system).
You completely miss the reasons for our attitudes concerning the two individuals. Florian is consistently wrong in ways that could harm software development.
PJ is consistently correct in ways that are good for software development. It has less to do with who pays whom and more to do with who is correct.
The distaste is magnified when someone is paid to be wrong but the ultimate source of the distaste that they are wrong.
What disclosure do you want, exactly? Bank records? Travel history? Phone records?
Florian's hand was ultimately forced because it is impractical to keep consulting for multiple large companies a secret.
So far, no one has ever found any evidence that PJ is anything other than what she says she is -- a Linux user and former paralegal. Even when Maureen O'Gara thought it'd be a good idea to stalk her and publish everything to the world, no evidence of any kind came to light.
You are proposing a criminal (yes, criminal, perjury is a crime, and sworn statements as to PJ's lack of involvement with IBM were filed in the SCO case) conspiracy spanning at least multiple large public companies, a well-known law professor, and several prominent tech journalists.
Presumably, they would like to know which law firm employs her. That is relevant information, though I suspect she knows better than to cover cases her firm participates in after what happened when the Patent Troll Tracker was outed as a Cisco lawyer.
He was an honest fellow who got hit with a bunch of lawsuits from a troll who didn't like being called a troll and ended up in a mess because he commented on a case he was a party to and ended up resigning. He was outed after a troll put a bounty on his identity, no less.
