eWeek: What is going on?

I know that economics in the computer publishing industry have been difficult lately, causing several well-known magazines to shut down and pushing rivals into mergers. But I expect that still-going concerns like eWeek/ZD Media to at least use their resources wisely. Instead we get pieces like DB Test Pioneer Makes History written by the West Coast director of eWeek Labs. I wrote him the following via email:

“”Just curious as to the point of this article. Most people in the industry are already aware of the license limitation, although I suppose the point of origin is an interesting tidbit. Seems like recently there have been an increasing number of such short pieces in eWeek. Given the lawsuit filed by the NY Attorney General against Network Associates on a similar license clause, I would have expected the article to at least speculate on similar applicability in this situation. How, after all, is Oracle’s clause different from NA’s?”

ZD did post an article on the New York case as well. Though a similar question could reasonably be posed to the New York AG: why sue NA now and only them and not other companies with speech-stiffling license clauses as well? For example, Microsoft has similar restrctions on SQL Server and the .NET Framework components.

Back to my original point: what useful value is served by Dyck’s article?

Update: Mr. Dyck replies “I had talked to David DeWitt and thought the origin of the license clause was an interesting historical event — that was the only point. I wrote that story a few weeks ago, before the NY Attorney General’s lawsuit, so couldn’t reference that event, but I’m very supportive of it, and hope the state is successful. All these clauses are on similar legal ground, and so this case will be precedent setting.”