Laura DiDio

Laura DiDio is a senior analyst, formerly with Giga Information Group (now Forrester) and currently (2004) with The Yankee Group consulting firm in Boston. She was educated as a journalist, earning a B.A. in communications at Fordham University. She shows a long history as a reporter and editor covering the events in the networking community. Her recent work has included the assessment of Microsoft Windows 2000.

Contents

1 Open Source 2 SCO affair 3 64-bit 4 External links

Open Source

Her opposition to how Open Source software is handled shows in this remark (quoted from a phone interview from her home in Massachusetts): "The thing about Linux is, you can talk about a free, open operating system all you want, but you can't take that idea of free and open and put it into a capitalist system and maintain it as though it is some kind of hippie commune or ashram, because if you can do it like that, at that point I'm like, 'Pass the hookah please!'". And on another occasion she followed up: "I'm all for open source, and competition serves everyone's interest. But if Linux is really to take its place alongside Windows... then the vendors in this space cannot act like a bunch of hippies in a '60s commune or ashram. There really is no such thing as a free lunch."

SCO affair

In June, 2003, she was one of several analysts who agreed, under nondisclosure, to view snippets of code that SCO claimed had been inserted into Red Hat Linux. She stated that "It appeared as though the Unix System V code [that is, SCO's code] complete with the developer notes had been copied and pasted right into Linux. OK now, that said, that is not empirical proof of anything. It's just what it looked like to me, and they showed us snippets of things, so I can't state with absolute certainty what it meant. But what I came away thinking was that if this is what it appeared to be, then SCO has a credible case."

This alleged support of SCO infuriated the GNU/Linux community. One poster responding to a GrokLaw article stated "her name is now mud and the term 'DiDio' will forever be associated with gullible analyst who can't see past the vendor BS."

Didiot or DiDioT ("Did'-ee-ut", also "Dee id'-ee-ut") is a term given to her by some of the Linux community, expressing their opinion of her statements in regard of The SCO Group's lawsuit against IBM.

What most members of the Linux community hold against her is that her approach in this matter was unprofessional, and that "her mistaken ideas, expressed with conviction, did damage to GNU/Linux." However, some of the criticism she has drawn seems fuelled by other factors, such as her lack of formal education in computer science or of personal experience in writing program code: (user 'david l.' on the GrokLaw page) "Since she is not an expert in programing or the history of Unix, she should have consulted with some experts before rendering a professional opinion. If she had, she would have known to ask hard questions like Claybrook [a developer, who also viewed the excerpts]." And: (user 'Noel' on Linux Today) "She has no clue about writing code. Not a single bit at all... For goodness sake this person has only a B.A. in communication degree. She writes magazine articles not code..."

Half a year later she remarked on SCO's claim: "You cannot draw a definitive conclusion from seeing snippets, you need the whole picture, and that's what we haven't seen yet. With that said, you'd have to be really crazy to try and sue IBM if you didn't have something."

In 2005 she acknowledged SCO's financial difficulties, stating that "[SCO's delisting by NAQDAQ] is clearly a red light; If I were an investor, I would be very concerned." In April, 2005 she also acknowledged its legal difficulties: "As the party that launched the suit, the onus is squarely on The SCO Group to prove its claims. And yes, Judge Kimball's remarks in rendering his ruling were a scathing indictment against SCO—on the surface, the deck appears to be stacked higher than the Sears Tower against SCO." However, she analogized the situation to the Red Sox near-elimination from the pennant race before coming back to win the World Series. She equivocated: "SCO could still pull out a long-shot victory if it has the evidence it claims it does, and if the evidence stands up to the scrutiny of jury and judge. Or this case could turn out to be the biggest nothing since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's vault on national TV and didn't even find cockroaches!"

64-bit

She is noted for commenting on 64-bit computing: "How much of a difference can you see? Thirty-two bit is more than good enough." That quote, which seemingly goes against the instincts that have been driving the computing industry since its inception, actually stemmed from a remark about the use in desktops, and how superfluous, costly, and therefore unrealistic such a move would be at this time (2004). One has to wonder, however, with both AMD and Intel chips with 64-bit extensions available at this time for no greater a cost than their 32-bit only forerunners, and with computationally-intensive applications gaining an obvious performance boost from the technology, why exactly this comment was made.

External links

• Laura DiDio, Senior Analyst (http://www.yankeegroup.com/public/events/conferences/ITF2003/components/IntegrationTechForumSpeakers.pdf) (pp 3/4: Her company résumé from the ITF2003 speaker list)
• NewsFactor (http://cio-today.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19958.html) ("Is Windows Cheaper Than Linux?")
• Network World Fusion (http://www.nwfusion.com/news/1999/0712directory.html) ("Novell to push new NDS role")
• GrowLaw Research (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=235) (Thread: "Where Was Ms. DiDio On This Day of Days?")
• OSnews (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3752) ("The SCO Threat: A professional Linux User's Perspective")
• Information Week (http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10300314) ("First Analyst Impressed By SCO's 'Proof'" – June 5, 2003)
• Linux Today (http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2003-06-06-009-26-NW-KN-LL) ("Analyst Finds SCO's 'Proof' Credible")
• The Salt Lake Tribune (http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Aug/08062003/business/81616.asp) ("SCO Group ready to put up fight over its Linux operating system")
• NewsFactor (http://cio-today.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21982.html) ("SCO Licensing Issue Riles Linux Users")
• Slashdot (http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/08/20/0748221.shtml?tid=106&tid=123&tid=130&tid=185&tid=190&tid=99) (Thread: "SCO Prepares To Sue Linux End Users")
• Salon (http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/08/18/sco_ibm/) ("Fear, Uncertainty and Linux")
• Laura DiDio on TWikIWeThey (http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/LauraDiDio)
• internetnews (http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3285521) ("SCO Forced To Show Evidence" – December 5, 2003)
• NewsFactor (http://enterprise-windows-it.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=23137) ("Microsoft Releases 64-Bit Windows Beta")
• Is SCO down for the count this time? (http://www.thechannelinsider.com/article2/0,1759,1765646,00.asp) DiDio's April, 2005 analysis of SCO's legal situation