The Satirized Is the Satirist, or Who Bought the “Journalists”?

I watched the most recent Silicon Valley episode last night.I laughed at some parts (not as much as a usual episode) and then there was acompletely unbelievable tech-related plot twist — quite out ofcharacter for that show. I was surprised.

When the credits played, my draw dropped when I saw the episode's authorwas Dan Lyons.Lyons (whose work has beenpromoted by the Linux Foundation) once compared me toa communistand a member of organized crime (in, Forbes, a prominentpublication for the wealthy) because of my work enforcing the GPL.

In the years since Lyons' first anti-software freedom article (yes, therewere more), I've watched many who once helped me enforce the GPL changepositions and oppose GPL enforcement (including allies who once receivedcriticism alongside me). Many such allies went even further —publicly denouncing my work and regularly undermining GPL enforcement politically.

Attacks by people like Dan Lyons — journalists well connected withindustry trade associations and companies — are one reason so manypeople are too afraid to enforce the GPL. I've wondered for years why thetechnology press has such a pro-corporate agenda, but it eventually becameobvious to me in early 2005 when listening to yet another David Pogue Appleproduct review: nearly the entire tech press is bought and paid for by the very companieson which they report! The cartoonish level of Orwellian fear across ourindustry of GPL enforcement is but one example of many for-profit corporateagendas that people like Lyons have helped promulgate through theirpro-company reporting.

Meanwhile, I had taken Silicon Valley (until this week) aspretty good satire on the pathetic state of the technology industry today.Perhaps Alec Berg and Mike Judge just liked Lyons' script — not evenknowing that he is a small part of the problem they seek to criticize.Regardless as to why his script was produced, the line between satirist andthe satirized is clearly thinner than I imagined; it seems just as thin asthe line between technology journalist and corporate PR employee.

I still hope that Berg and Judge seek, just as Judge did in OfficeSpace, to pierce the veil of for-profit corporate manipulation ofemployees and users alike. However, for me, the luster of their achievementfades when I realize at least some of their creative collaboratorsparticipate in the central to the problem they criticize.

Shall we start a letter writing campaign to convince them to donate someof Silicon Valley's proceeds to Free Software charities? Or, atthe very least, to convince Berg to write one of his usually excellentepisodes about how the technology press is completely corrupted by thecompanies on which they report?