> The term originally referred to lies coming out of Microsoft No. It originally referred to the marketing strategy of IBM, which basically consisted of casti

> The term originally referred to lies coming out of Microsoft No. It originally referred to the marketing strategy of IBM, which basically consisted of casting doubt on the viability of their competitors. "No-one's ever been fired for buying IBM." It specifically did not mean outright lies, but the strategy of pointing out that when the market consists of an 800-pound gorilla and hordes of chimps, the chimps might be nimbler to respond to your needs and offer better prices, but you never know when one of them gets bulldozed, and if your infrastructure depends on them, that might be really bad for you. It is not necessary to lie to do this, and good FUD explicitly just consists of carefully selected verifiable factual statements that cast doubt on your competitors. It is an extremely ballsy marketing strategy: "Yes, our product is worse and costs much more, but you know that we have done this for decades and will still be doing this and supporting you for decades to come." It sold mainframes like hot cakes, even when competing systems sometimes were literally an order of magnitude less expensive. The association with Microsoft comes from how Gates was really impressed by it, and copied it for Microsoft, once they got big enough to use it. Unlike IBM, Microsoft used the term FUD internally, as revealed in the various documents that were leaked and/or published through discovery.