VA Linux and Our "great disservice"

By: Vindictive | 05June2001

Immediately upon publishing "Did VA Linux Screw U 2?", which accused VA of reneging on an agreement with members of their "Affiliate Underground" program, we decided to give certain Internet tech news organizations a heads-up, in case they thought it might be worth a story. Having an injustice widely exposed in the press has enabled more than one politician or businessperson to see the light. Here's the email we sent to Wired, News.com, ZDNet, The Register and others -- which we also copied to VA Linux. Subject: Short article: "Did VA Linux Screw U 2?" Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2001 14:56:48 -0600 From: unquiet Subtitle: "In the new Web-based economy, you can still get ripped off the old fashion way." http://unquietmind.com/valinux.html The events described therein may be of some interest to your tech news organization. It concerns a now-defunct VALinux program called the Affiliate Underground, the terms of which are still available here: http://www.valinux.com/about/affiliates/terms.html I am keeping a copy, in case VA removes the page. If that happens, I'd be happy to send it to any of you. I also have the emails from VA Linux that support my article, in case you'd like me to forward them as well. We haven't received a non-automated reply from any of those organizations (although logs indicate that some of them looked at the piece), but that same morning, we did get an answer from John Mark Walker, who managed the Affiliate Underground program for VA Linux. As loathe as I am to reprint emails without warning the sender beforehand, in this case, we will because his reply contains an accusation. We will disclose it -- and the evidence that backs up our article -- in order to defend ourselves. Here is the email chain of events that were described in our original VA Linux piece. Subject: Your Affiliate Underground Statistics for March 28, 2001 Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 16:53:59 -0800 From: "Affiliate Underground" [snip] Project Update: As some of you may already know, VA went through some restructuring and cost-cutting a few weeks ago. The fallout for the Affiliate Underground is that it is being transferred to OSDN and will not be managed by me. Originally, the program was shut down for upgrades and maintenance, but conveniently - or not - the cost-cutting happened at the same time. I do not know when to expect the program to go back online. As far as current orders, everything that has been ordered will be delivered. However, this will take significantly longer than usual, so please be patient. [snip] -John Mark Walker Affiliate Underground Manager I believe I summarized it correctly in the original article: "...late in March 2001, VA informed its Affiliate Underground members that another business entity would be taking over the program..." About two weeks later, this arrived: Subject: Affiliate Underground Announcement for April 16, 2001 Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 22:15:50 -0700 From: "Affiliate Underground" Project Update: Well, all good things must come to an end. It seems that OSDN will not be taking up the program after all. The Affiliate Underground is officially closed for business. 1. All outstanding orders will be fulfilled. 2. We have a stash of T-Shirts that we intend to give away with more going to those with the most points. While we cannot accept more orders, we can get rid of our shirt inventory, but I fear that it will not be enough to cover the total amount of points. 3. Everyone who has earned commissions will get checks. I do not have a date on that, but it will happen. Thanks to everyone who took part in the program. -John Mark Walker SourceForge.net Foundry Man My summary in my article: "In mid-April, we were informed that the Affiliate Underground program had been terminated. Although they had a few shirts left to give away, they were not planning to honor the points that had accumulated." There's no need to reprint the substantial complaint email I sent to John Mark Walker on April 16th, since all my points were covered in our original VALinux piece, but here is his reply: Subject: Re: Affiliate Underground Announcement for April 16, 2001 Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 10:49:12 -0700 (PDT) From: "John Mark Walker" Hi, So, there are a few things going on here. To answer your assertions directly, 1. Yes, the program was taken off for maintenance. This was not my choice. It was a matter of our IT team informing me that the entire web site was changing and that the affiliate code was incompatible with the new, and oh, by the way, we're not going to bother integrating the 2. 2. A few days after this, VA restructured - there are countless news articles detailing this. I will refer you to them. The long and short of it is that no one was to take on the affiliate program. 3. I was involved in discussions with people to potentially take over the program. At one point, I thought it was going to happen, but that proved to be entirely too preliminary, and it ended up not happening. 4. As soon as I received information that no one was taking up the program, I pulled the plug. I realize this sucks for everyone involved (including me, by the way), but there's nothing I can do about it since we have no dedicated budget to this anymore. I am currently talking to people about better ways to redeem points that have accumulated, but I don't want to say too much right now because it may just set folks up for a let down. I will let everyone know of any changes that happen here. -JM The phrases "this sucks for everyone involved" and "we have no dedicated budget to this anymore" would seem to affirm my assertion about an "unwillingness to live up to this particular contractual obligation". Also, notice that Mr. Walker wrote he would let members know if there were changes. A month and a half passed without further information from VA Linux, before I published my article. After he read it, I suddenly heard back from John Mark Walker: Subject: Re: Short article: "Did VA Linux Screw U 2?" Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 13:58:53 -0700 (PDT) From: John Mark Walker To: unquiet The events you described are an absolute lie. I am honoring everyone's points. Completely. I have got the funding from VA to honor everyone's points that were accumulated as of April 17, 2001. I'm sorry that it has not been distributed yet, but it will be. You have done a great disservice to whoever reads this. Unless you assume that I completely faked -- or even 'edited' -- the emails I've reprinted above (I didn't), which part of my original article contains the "absolute lie"? Given the evidence, and with no further word for six weeks, to what other conclusion would a rational person come? By an amazing coincidence, later that same day, this email went out to members of the defunct Affiliate Underground: Subject: Final Affiliate Underground Announcement Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2001 22:57:19 +0000 From: Affiliate Underground Project Update: It has been some time since I announced that the Affiliate Underground was no more. This announcement is to let you know that all those who accrued at least 15,000 points outstanding at the time the program ended (April 17, 2001) will receive gift certificates for ThinkGeek merchandise. Multiple gift certificates will be used to reach an amount as close to your point total as possible without going over. For those that did not have enough points, I will be happy to send you a T-shirt. I apologize for the delay. I expect to have everything sent by the end of this month, June, 2001. Your point total follows. Please note that this point total reflects banners that have been shown after the April 17 cutoff. The gift certificates that get sent will not include points accrued after April 17. Your Final Point Tally: 258466 -John Mark Walker SourceForge.net Foundry Manager Of course, it is possible that our bringing a potential injustice to light happened to coincide with VA Linux deciding -- a month and a half later (how long is that in Internet time?) -- to make it right, but I don't believe in coincidence. Unquietmind didn't save the planet this time, or even end the drug war (which may actually be related), but maybe our "great disservice" was to help a few web publishers -- those who allowed VA Linux to place advertising on their sites -- to finally get most of what was coming to them.