Fear, uncertainty and doubt
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (
FUD) is a
sales or
marketing strategy of disseminating negative (and vague) information on a competitor's product. The term originated to describe misinformation tactics in the
computer hardware industry and has since been used more broadly. FUD is a manifestation of the
appeal to fear.
FUD has also come to mean frustrate, undermine and demoralize.
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."
[Gene Amdahl, quoted in Eric S. Raymond, ''The Jargon File: FUD".] The term has also been attributed to veteran
Morgan Stanley computer analyst Ulrich Weil.
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."
[Eric S. Raymond, "The Jargon File: FUD".]Opponents of certain large computer corporations state that the spreading of fear, uncertainty, and doubt is an
unethical marketing technique that these corporations consciously employ.
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. 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 can not be used to combat it."
[Open Source Initiative. "Halloween I: Open Source Software (New?) Development Methodology"] More recently, Microsoft has issued statements about the "viral nature" of the
GNU General Public License (GPL), which Open Source proponents purport to be FUD. Microsoft's statements are often directed at the
GNU/
Linux community in particular, to discourage widespread Linux adoption, which could hurt Microsoft's marketshare.
The
SCO Group's
2003 lawsuit against IBM, claiming
intellectual property infringements by the
open source community, is also regarded by some as being an attempt at spreading FUD, especially about Linux. IBM directly alleged in its counterclaim to SCO's suit that SCO is spreading FUD.
[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]Similarly, the claims made by some members of the
GPL community about the dangers and threats to freedom of software from non-GPL sources, such as proprietary software vendors or non-
copyleft licenses, are regarded by many to be FUD.
Free software advocates now often apply FUD as a label to the people who they feel are trying to make the FUD smears against
GNU/Linux or other
open source projects like
Mozilla Firefox. In doing so, FUD takes on somewhat of a double meaning, as it is insinuated that those trying to spread the fear, uncertainty, and doubt are fuddy duddies who are too backward and set in their ways to acknowledge the value of something new and innovative. Sometimes this is written out as "FUDdy-duddy."[
1]
FUD can be used to offhandedly "smear" criticism or legitimate debate, even in cases where the allegations are without merit or are merely implied; this tactic is often used in cases where the initial publicity surrounding claims of FUD is likely to vastly overshadow any subsequent retraction. Such an arbitrary usage is a general type of
logical fallacy known as
ad hominem circumstantial.
At the same time, those being smeared can dismiss criticism as simply being FUD tactics, for example when usability defects in
OSS are commented on by marketing directors of competing companies. This is aggravated by the aggressive and sometimes rabid
anti-Microsoft stance many advocates of Free software take, most frequently seen on the website
Slashdot. It is often said by less radical members of the Free Software community, as well as members of the commercial software industry, that the anti-Microsoft and anti-proprietary stances taken by these advocates often involve using FUD of their own. The
Open Source community hide FUD tactics behind comedy - repeated
BSOD jokes, citing long fixed problems and problems in the Windows 95/98 platforms as a reason not to use XP. Personal attacks on Microsoft staff members and a questioning of their abilities are also not uncommon.
FUD is a commonly used tactic in the online forum game
Werewolf. The basic notion of the game is that several players are evil werewolves but they must convince the other players they are not and instead get innocent people "lynched". Werewolves are invariably caught in their lies, which are identified by the FUD principle. They are pushing Fear, causing a sense of Uncertainty, and making people Doubt their actions. This causes the "village" (the good players) to act in a chaotic manner which allows Werewolves to push the lynch to a target of their choosing.
Someone on the tech news commentary site,
Slashdot, coined the term FUD Light in parody of the
Bud Light brand beer manufactured by
Anheuser-Busch. Reference made to FUD Dark as well. The two 'varieties' correspond to the varying degrees of how much fear-mongering is in the article referenced.[
2]
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. Bush supporters also accused their opponents of using FUD by spreading rumors about a possible
military draft should Bush be re-elected [
3].
*
Fanboyism*
Embrace, extend and extinguish*
Propaganda*
FUDZilla*
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)
*
FUDforum
