Hi John - I would never delete your comment. This is a duplicate comment that I just posted on your own blog.

My daily link list is a collection of press releases, articles, and blog entries. As you may know, companies rarely, if ever, issue press releases about executive departures. Had there been an article in the press or a blog entry covering the executive departures at GroundWork, I would have linked to it, as I have linked to other executive departure articles and blog entries in the past.

Another point - there is a whole bunch of written material produced by The 451 Group that is only available to our clients. Often times, we will cover topics in our client-only material that does not go on the blog.

We have published our principles and ethics on our web site:

http://www.the451group.com/scope_of_research/principles.php

I invite you to talk to people who know me well, such as your friend William Hurley, who can provide insight into my character and dedication to objective coverage.

Let me start by saying that your reputation is highly recommended by all of my new friends, whurley included. I also understand there is a very fine line for the kind of job a company like yours has to do to be credible and make money at the same time. I think your external content is great and on a few occasions (with different companies) I have had the opportunity to trial your internal material and it is VERY good.

Now starts the who cares what I think portion. Unfortunately I analyze AG’s more than most people. Probably because I loath Gartner. In my small corner of th world Gartner is a 1 and Redmonk is an 8 (where 0=garbage and 10=Nirvana). My loose criteria for this is based on a few questions.

1) Can the AG provide valuable information to me?

2) Is their material open?

3) Do they disclose their customers when they are commenting on them?

4) Do they handle objective criticism well?

5) Do they pass the smell test?

IMHO, for the 451 Group…

1) Yes, and you are on my RSS.

2) No.

3) No.

4) Yes.

5) Not sure yet. Since I am not privy to your paying customer data I can only go by your public data.

One last note I am not a big fan of automated links for this reason. I know many people use it, however, I like to think that everything that goes on my blog is approved by me and represent my thoughts. I read every article that I link to and therefore I take full responsibility for everything I post.

If you are interested in some of my thoughts on all this please read the following posts…

http://www.johnmwillis.com/wp/open-source-software/my-views-on-oss-esm-part-1/