Dell's Ubuntu strategy once again faces Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD). Multiple times in the past 12 months or so, Dell's strong Ubuntu efforts have been undermined by disappearing desktop offerings. Here's what's wrong - and right - with Dell's Ubuntu initiatives.

Companies with inferior products are often tempted to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. A bit of FUD is an effective leveler, allowing these companies to compete on more equal terms with the competition.

Companies with inferior products are often tempted to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Paul Rubens wonder if Novell's FUD campaign a sign of a company that is afraid of the truth.

FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) is defined on wikipedia.org as a "tactic of rhetoric used in sales, marketing and public relations....a strategic attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative (and vague) information". In layman's terms, it's a bunch of bull to scare people into doing what they want you to do. Linux and the Open Source community are no strangers to FUD.

Established IT vendors have long relied on "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" to scare their customers away from the upstarts. But customers are getting tired of it, and a new generation of vendors is finding that FUD only makes them stronger.

Ladies and gentlemen, sit down. You have all been taken advantage of in the worst manipulative mental carnival imagineable.

FUD. We all know the term. Wikipedia states it as: "Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a tactic of rhetoric used in sales, marketing, public relations, and illiberal democracies.

Recently Ubuntu/Canonical contacted me for the use of buntu in our domain name. I had emailed them long before any announcement of the site but with no reply until the site began to attract visitors/users.

I understand that Ubuntu/Canonical has a job to do when it comes to protecting their best interest. But Ourbuntu is doing nothing more than giving users the ability to setup a Ubuntu/Linux based system and sell it at no cost. Which helps promote the use of opensource software.

We all know the term “FUD“, don’t we? If you haven’t heard of it, it means “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt”, and it was created by a big software monopoly, often headlined “Get the facts”.

No doubt, it's sometimes difficult to measure Ubuntu's business success. Canonical says Ubuntu now has about 12 million Linux users - up from an estimated 8 million users in 2007. That sounds impressive, but what does that really mean in terms of Ubuntu's market penetration, Canonical's march to profitability and Ubuntu's progress as a Linux distribution?