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EspañolFEAR, UNCERTAINTY AND DOUBT
'Fear, uncertainty, and doubt' ('FUD') is a tactic of rhetoric used in sales, marketing and public relations.[1][2] FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative (and vague) information. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor's product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival.
The term originated to describe disinformation tactics in the computer hardware industry and has since been used more broadly.[3] FUD is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.
FUD was first defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl Corp.: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products."[4] The term has also been attributed to veteran Morgan Stanley computer analyst Ulrich Weil, though it had already been used in other contexts as far back as the 1920s.[5][6]
As Eric S. Raymond writes:
"The idea, of course, was to persuade buyers to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. After 1991 the term has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon."[7]
By spreading questionable information about the drawbacks of less well known products, an established company can discourage decision-makers from choosing those products over its wares, regardless of the relative ''technical'' merits. This is a recognized phenomenon, epitomized by the traditional axiom of purchasing agents that "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment". The result is that many companies' IT departments buy software that they know to be technically inferior because upper management is more likely to recognize the brand.
Although once it was usually attributed to IBM, in the 1990s and later the term became most often associated with industry giant Microsoft. Said Roger Irwin:[8]
The Halloween documents (leaked internal Microsoft documents whose authenticity was verified by the company) use the term FUD to describe a potential tactic, as in "OSS is long-term credible … [therefore] FUD tactics cannot be used to combat it."[9] More recently, Microsoft has issued statements about the "viral nature"[10] of the GNU General Public License (GPL), which Open Source proponents describe as FUD. Microsoft's statements are often directed at the GNU/Linux community in particular, to discourage widespread Linux adoption, which is gaining market share from Microsoft.
It is common to find misuses of the term where discussions about Linux or other hobbyist forums are found. More often than not, the term is incorrectly asserted as a synonym to a false or misleading statement when the root of a FUD can actually be true.
The SCO Group's 2003 lawsuit against IBM, claiming $5 billion in intellectual property infringements by the free software community, is seen by many inside and out of the open source community as FUD. IBM argued in its counterclaim, that SCO is spreading "fear, uncertainty, and doubt".[11]
Magistrate Judge Wells wrote (and Judge Kimball concurred) in her order limiting SCO's claims: "The court finds SCO’s arguments unpersuasive. SCO’s arguments are akin to SCO telling IBM sorry we are not going to tell you what you did wrong because you already know... SCO was required to disclose in detail what it feels IBM misappropriated... the court finds it inexcusable that SCO is... not placing all the details on the table. Certainly if an individual were stopped and accused of shoplifting after walking out of Neiman Marcus they would expect to be eventually told what they allegedly stole. It would be absurd for an officer to tell the accused that “you know what you stole I’m not telling.” Or, to simply hand the accused individual a catalog of Neiman Marcus’ entire inventory and say “it’s in there somewhere, you figure it out."[12]
The fact that there is no substantiation of the claims didn't stop SCO from launching a very public fear campaign in 2003.
'Darl McBride, President and CEO of SCO:'
#"IBM has taken our valuable trade secrets and given them away to Linux,"
#"We're finding... cases where there is line-by-line code in the Linux kernel that is matching up to our UnixWare code"
#"...unless more companies start licensing SCO's property... [SCO] may also sue Linus Torvalds... for patent infringement."
#"Both companies [IBM and Red Hat] have shifted liability to the customer and then taunted us to sue them."
#"We have the ability to go to users with lawsuits and we will if we have to, “It would be within SCO Group's rights to order every copy of AIX [IBM'S proprietary UNIX] destroyed,"
#"As of Friday, June 13 [2003], we will be done trying to talk to IBM, and we will be talking directly to its customers and going in and auditing them. IBM no longer has the authority to sell or distribute AIX and customers no longer have the right to use AIX software"
#"If you just drag this out in a typical litigation path, where it takes years and years to settle anything, and in the meantime you have all this uncertainty clouding over the market..."
#"Users are running systems that have basically pirated software inside, or stolen software inside of their systems, they have liability."[13]
The campaign evidently worked, as SCO stock skyrocketed from under $3 a share to over $20 in a matter of weeks in 2003. (It later dropped to around[14] $1.20—then crashed to under 50 cents on August 13, 2007 in the aftermath of a ruling that Novell owns the UNIX copyrights).
[15]
Main articles: appeal to fear
FUD is now often used in non-computer contexts with the same meaning. For example, in politics the tactic is often used to attempt to alter public opinion on a particular issue or on an opposing group. Often, one group will accuse another group of utilizing FUD. Many critics of George W. Bush accused him of using a FUD-based campaign in the 2004 U.S. presidential election.[16] Bush supporters likewise accused their opponents of using FUD by spreading rumors about a possible military draft should Bush be re-elected.
Generating FUD has become a nationally abused, manipulative technique in politics and the media. FUD-based phrases include “domino effect,” "electronic Pearl Harbor," and “weapons of mass destruction”[17]
★ Appeal to fear
★ Agnotology
★ Fanboyism
★ Chewbacca defense
★ Embrace, extend and extinguish
★ Propaganda
★ Tin-foil hat
★ Dihydrogen monoxide hoax
★ Fnord
1. The Complete Sales Letter Book, , Rhonda, Harris, Sharpe Professional, 1998,
2. The term FUD is also alternatively rendered as "Fear Uncertainty and Disinformation". See e.g., Netlingo, , Erin, Jansen, NetLingo, 2002, p. 179
3. For example, FUD has been used to describe social dynamics in contexts where sales, lobbying or commercial promotion is not involved. School Mobbing and Emotional Abuse, , Gail, Elliott, Brunner-Routledge, 2003,
4. Gene Amdahl, quoted in Eric S. Raymond, ''The Jargon File: FUD".
5. "Suspicion has no place in our interchanges; it is a shield for ignorance, a sign of fear, uncertainty and doubt." Caesar Augustus Yarbrough, The Roman Catholic Church Challenged, p. 75. The Patriotic Societies of Macon, 1920.
6. "Again he was caught in a tempest of fear, uncertainty and doubt." Monica Mary Gardner, The Patriot Novelist of Poland, Henryk Sienkiewicz, p. 71. J.M. Dent ; E.P. Dutton & Co, 1926.
7. Eric S. Raymond, "The Jargon File: FUD".
8. What is FUD
9. Open Source Initiative. "Halloween I: Open Source Software (New?) Development Methodology"
10. Press release from Microsoft which has viral nature of open-source quote
11. The SCO Group v IBM - answer to amended complaint and counterclaims (Undecided, US District Court - Utah, Kimball J, filed 6 August 2004) Section E, paragraph 22
12. The SCO Group v IBM - ORDER GRANTING IN PART IBM'S MOTION TO LIMIT SCO's CLAIMS (Undecided, US District Court - Utah, Kimball J, filed 6 August 2004) Section IV, paragraphs 33,34
13. Show Person
14. SCOX: Historical Prices for SCO GRP INC (THE)
15. Investors bailing on SCO stock, SCOX plummets
16. The Anti-Kerry FUD
17. Dirty Bomber? Dirty Justice
★ FUDZilla (archived project on Libervis)
★ FUD (or the original page on the Internet Archive)
★ The FUD FAQ (particularly as applied to the Linux operating system and the modern-day open source software movement)
★ A Brief History of a Microsoft FUD
★ Get the FUDge - A collection of counter Microsoft FUD
★ Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt: An Essential Bibliography
★ FUD and IT Blog on Computer Weekly
The term originated to describe disinformation tactics in the computer hardware industry and has since been used more broadly.[3] FUD is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.
| Contents |
| Definition |
| Contemporary examples |
| SCO vs. IBM |
| Non-computer uses |
| See also |
| Notes and references |
| External links |
Definition
FUD was first defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl Corp.: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products."[4] The term has also been attributed to veteran Morgan Stanley computer analyst Ulrich Weil, though it had already been used in other contexts as far back as the 1920s.[5][6]
As Eric S. Raymond writes:
"The idea, of course, was to persuade buyers to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. After 1991 the term has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon."[7]
By spreading questionable information about the drawbacks of less well known products, an established company can discourage decision-makers from choosing those products over its wares, regardless of the relative ''technical'' merits. This is a recognized phenomenon, epitomized by the traditional axiom of purchasing agents that "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment". The result is that many companies' IT departments buy software that they know to be technically inferior because upper management is more likely to recognize the brand.
Contemporary examples
Although once it was usually attributed to IBM, in the 1990s and later the term became most often associated with industry giant Microsoft. Said Roger Irwin:[8]
The Halloween documents (leaked internal Microsoft documents whose authenticity was verified by the company) use the term FUD to describe a potential tactic, as in "OSS is long-term credible … [therefore] FUD tactics cannot be used to combat it."[9] More recently, Microsoft has issued statements about the "viral nature"[10] of the GNU General Public License (GPL), which Open Source proponents describe as FUD. Microsoft's statements are often directed at the GNU/Linux community in particular, to discourage widespread Linux adoption, which is gaining market share from Microsoft.
It is common to find misuses of the term where discussions about Linux or other hobbyist forums are found. More often than not, the term is incorrectly asserted as a synonym to a false or misleading statement when the root of a FUD can actually be true.
SCO vs. IBM
The SCO Group's 2003 lawsuit against IBM, claiming $5 billion in intellectual property infringements by the free software community, is seen by many inside and out of the open source community as FUD. IBM argued in its counterclaim, that SCO is spreading "fear, uncertainty, and doubt".[11]
Magistrate Judge Wells wrote (and Judge Kimball concurred) in her order limiting SCO's claims: "The court finds SCO’s arguments unpersuasive. SCO’s arguments are akin to SCO telling IBM sorry we are not going to tell you what you did wrong because you already know... SCO was required to disclose in detail what it feels IBM misappropriated... the court finds it inexcusable that SCO is... not placing all the details on the table. Certainly if an individual were stopped and accused of shoplifting after walking out of Neiman Marcus they would expect to be eventually told what they allegedly stole. It would be absurd for an officer to tell the accused that “you know what you stole I’m not telling.” Or, to simply hand the accused individual a catalog of Neiman Marcus’ entire inventory and say “it’s in there somewhere, you figure it out."[12]
The fact that there is no substantiation of the claims didn't stop SCO from launching a very public fear campaign in 2003.
'Darl McBride, President and CEO of SCO:'
#"IBM has taken our valuable trade secrets and given them away to Linux,"
#"We're finding... cases where there is line-by-line code in the Linux kernel that is matching up to our UnixWare code"
#"...unless more companies start licensing SCO's property... [SCO] may also sue Linus Torvalds... for patent infringement."
#"Both companies [IBM and Red Hat] have shifted liability to the customer and then taunted us to sue them."
#"We have the ability to go to users with lawsuits and we will if we have to, “It would be within SCO Group's rights to order every copy of AIX [IBM'S proprietary UNIX] destroyed,"
#"As of Friday, June 13 [2003], we will be done trying to talk to IBM, and we will be talking directly to its customers and going in and auditing them. IBM no longer has the authority to sell or distribute AIX and customers no longer have the right to use AIX software"
#"If you just drag this out in a typical litigation path, where it takes years and years to settle anything, and in the meantime you have all this uncertainty clouding over the market..."
#"Users are running systems that have basically pirated software inside, or stolen software inside of their systems, they have liability."[13]
The campaign evidently worked, as SCO stock skyrocketed from under $3 a share to over $20 in a matter of weeks in 2003. (It later dropped to around[14] $1.20—then crashed to under 50 cents on August 13, 2007 in the aftermath of a ruling that Novell owns the UNIX copyrights).
[15]
Non-computer uses
Main articles: appeal to fear
FUD is now often used in non-computer contexts with the same meaning. For example, in politics the tactic is often used to attempt to alter public opinion on a particular issue or on an opposing group. Often, one group will accuse another group of utilizing FUD. Many critics of George W. Bush accused him of using a FUD-based campaign in the 2004 U.S. presidential election.[16] Bush supporters likewise accused their opponents of using FUD by spreading rumors about a possible military draft should Bush be re-elected.
Generating FUD has become a nationally abused, manipulative technique in politics and the media. FUD-based phrases include “domino effect,” "electronic Pearl Harbor," and “weapons of mass destruction”[17]
See also
★ Appeal to fear
★ Agnotology
★ Fanboyism
★ Chewbacca defense
★ Embrace, extend and extinguish
★ Propaganda
★ Tin-foil hat
★ Dihydrogen monoxide hoax
★ Fnord
Notes and references
1. The Complete Sales Letter Book, , Rhonda, Harris, Sharpe Professional, 1998,
2. The term FUD is also alternatively rendered as "Fear Uncertainty and Disinformation". See e.g., Netlingo, , Erin, Jansen, NetLingo, 2002, p. 179
3. For example, FUD has been used to describe social dynamics in contexts where sales, lobbying or commercial promotion is not involved. School Mobbing and Emotional Abuse, , Gail, Elliott, Brunner-Routledge, 2003,
4. Gene Amdahl, quoted in Eric S. Raymond, ''The Jargon File: FUD".
5. "Suspicion has no place in our interchanges; it is a shield for ignorance, a sign of fear, uncertainty and doubt." Caesar Augustus Yarbrough, The Roman Catholic Church Challenged, p. 75. The Patriotic Societies of Macon, 1920.
6. "Again he was caught in a tempest of fear, uncertainty and doubt." Monica Mary Gardner, The Patriot Novelist of Poland, Henryk Sienkiewicz, p. 71. J.M. Dent ; E.P. Dutton & Co, 1926.
7. Eric S. Raymond, "The Jargon File: FUD".
8. What is FUD
9. Open Source Initiative. "Halloween I: Open Source Software (New?) Development Methodology"
10. Press release from Microsoft which has viral nature of open-source quote
11. The SCO Group v IBM - answer to amended complaint and counterclaims (Undecided, US District Court - Utah, Kimball J, filed 6 August 2004) Section E, paragraph 22
12. The SCO Group v IBM - ORDER GRANTING IN PART IBM'S MOTION TO LIMIT SCO's CLAIMS (Undecided, US District Court - Utah, Kimball J, filed 6 August 2004) Section IV, paragraphs 33,34
13. Show Person
14. SCOX: Historical Prices for SCO GRP INC (THE)
15. Investors bailing on SCO stock, SCOX plummets
16. The Anti-Kerry FUD
17. Dirty Bomber? Dirty Justice
External links
★ FUDZilla (archived project on Libervis)
★ FUD (or the original page on the Internet Archive)
★ The FUD FAQ (particularly as applied to the Linux operating system and the modern-day open source software movement)
★ A Brief History of a Microsoft FUD
★ Get the FUDge - A collection of counter Microsoft FUD
★ Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt: An Essential Bibliography
★ FUD and IT Blog on Computer Weekly
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psst.. try this: add to faves
