Maureen O'Gara
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Maureen O'Gara is a technology journalist.
O'Gara is editor-in-chief of Client Server News, a weekly Microsoft and Open Source industry newsletter and also Linux news site LinuxGram, a feature published by American Linux magazine Linux Business News, which is owned by publisher Sys-Con. She also has her own show on Sys-Con's online TV site.
During the 1990s O'Gara was a writer and editor for the Unigram X industry newsletter, which featured inside information and analysis concerning the strategies and dealings of companies in Unix-related businesses.
[edit] Views on the GPL
O'Gara is known for her vehement criticism of the General Public License (GPL), the licence under which many popular open source applications such as Linux are placed. This has attracted considerable criticism from the Linux community.
[edit] Groklaw controversy
In April 2005, O'Gara placed an article in Linux Business News regarding the lawsuit of Daniel Wallace in his attempt to render the GPL illegal in the United States. The article was widely considered to be heavily biased against the open source community, members of which had accused O'Gara of distorting the facts or even outright lies. One of the most prominent critics of the article was Pamela Jones (also known as "PJ"), founder of Groklaw. While criticism of O'Gara's journalism was not uncommon prior to this, this was the first article that provoked such a heated response from the Linux community and Jones herself. In response to Jones' vehement criticism of the article, O'Gara released a report claiming to have found the secretive "PJ", disclosing photographs of her home, her street address, telephone number and private e-mail address, as well as other personal details about her and her family. This prompted threats of legal action from Jones and her supporters, and consequently led to O'Gara's apparent dismissal from Sys-Con.
The circumstances surrounding her dismissal, however, caused confusion. While Sys-Con, in the form of LinuxWorld editor James Turner announced that O'Gara's material was in the process of deletion and that none of her material would be published again, it remained unclear as to whether he implied the online publications of Sys-Con as a whole or only LinuxWorld. To date, O'Gara has continued to write for Linux Business News, another Sys-Con online publication, though no flamewars regarding her material have since taken place. However, after the publisher of Sys-Con Media granted an interview to Free Software Magazine in which he took a supportive stance in regard to O'Gara's reporting, Turner, together with the entire senior editiorial staff of LinuxWorld Magazine, resigned on May 14th, 2005. As of May 11, 2006, Ms. O'Gara is still writing articles for Sys-con, and specifically for Linux Business News.
As of 2005, O'Gara presently resides and works out of Long Island, New York.
