Since Hani seems too caught up in his dislike of all things JBoss to call it, I'm going to have to step in and bile the JDJ article on the JBoss anonymous comments fiasco, albeit in a less vituperative manner than the Bile-blogger himself would have if he had all his wits available.
Summarised, the article says "People should be honest."
Wow.
Honest people, or at least people who wish to believe they are honest, will nod self-righteously and say "True, true. We should all be nice to each other." Dishonest people will continue to believe that the only true crime is being caught, something JBoss Group managed to achieve with an incompetence that borders on frightening. Practical result of the article? A grasp of the moral high-ground on a battlefield nobody cares about.
The value of Internet message-boards as places of rational, honest debate is vanishingly close to zero. This was true before there was even a web, and everyone flamed each other over UUCP. The ServerSide and Javalobby are just comp.lang.java.advocacy with ad banners. Just because the boards have migrated to the web doesn't mean they've lost any of the characteristics that made Usenet so much fun: fevered egos, trolls, sock-puppets and flame-warriors.
Back when I was a regular on alt.aol-sucks, the newsgroup played host to a series of America Online shills posting from fake accounts. It was fun. We used them for target-practice. And of course, every time we discovered one, we crowed loudly about how blatantly unethical it was, as if the tiny little world we were arguing in mattered to anyone but ourselves. Which it didn't: all the arguing was done for our own amusement.
I find it about as easy to take the goings-on on the TSS forums seriously as I do the average day in Slashdot's discussions. The articles are great, but the threads are a pile of argumentative dreck from which you cherry-pick the occasional "+5 Insightful". Should we be pissed off at JBoss for its blatant institutional trolling? Definitely. Is there any hope that even without the sock-puppets, TSS and JL will become havens of rational, reasoned debate? Sure, and I've got a bridge to sell you.
So where does that leave the JDJ article? It didn't shed any new light on the situation, deciding instead to be a "be a good doggy" pat on the head to this particular minority slice of the Java community. You can't ask everyone to stop behaving like children when you have to be clinging on to some kind of adolescence to be involved in this part of the scene in the first place (and by writing this article, I'm firmly hanging on to my youth, damnit). All the adults are off coding, and not wasting their time getting into arguments on message-boards. The article can't be a plea for sanity, because sanity left the building long before JBoss snuck in the back door -- even long before Gosling came up with that whole freaky Java thing.
The public excoriation of JBoss Group has already run its course. There's nothing new to say about it. Everything from here on is just point-scoring.
I know you said your post was a bile, but I'll bite anyway ...
>> Summarised, the article says “People should be honest.”
Acually, summarised the article says, "People should work together to save our community from dishonesty." The article's primary audience are those members of the Java community who are adversely affected by the dishonest practices. Nowhere is there an appeal to those who have perpetrated the dishonest practices in the past. There is no "be a good doggy".
You are right that this article adds no new facts and sets forth no concrete actions that might 'fix' the problem. However, it is a good second step on the long road to turning the java forum/java blogging community around. The first step was to call the problem a problem, and now it is time for the community to decide whether they want to fix the problem or continue to let it slide into the gutter.
Kudos to Cameron and Rickard. I wish them luck.
Charles, while I have the greatest respect for your writing talents, and quite often for your opinions, I'm afraid your reading comprehension needs some real work. That's OK, though .. some day, some one will stick their neck out for you, and you'll remember this, and maybe then you'll understand. Until then, peace.
The problem with the Java community is not dishonesty, but its overwhelmingly adversarial nature (admittedly, something I'm contributing to right now). What dishonesty exists is at a level one would expect from a community that spends this amount of its time at each others throats.
At the same time, it's important to note that the "Java community" as represented by bloggers, Open Source notables and message-board contributors is but a tiny fraction of people who actually work with Java, and most of our little dramas really don't have any effect past an amusing Slashdot story that quickly scrolls off the front page.
But I'm sure everyone involved will continue to defend peoples right to take cheap shots, so long as it's not done anonymously.
When your enemy is weakened, offering them only further censure is not the road to reform.