In the year 1975 Gene Amdahl left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl Corp.  IBM waged a vicious marketing campaign against Amdahl that ultimately caused Amdahl to define FUD as it is used in its modern context: “FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products.” The technology industry took the basic concept of argumentum in terrorem and refined it into its purest essence.  Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt is the carefully calculated and malicious practice of using misinformation to generate doubt, and ultimately fear, in order to sell a product. FUD can be used at the level of an individual product, a feature, or wielded as a blunt cudgel against an entire company.  It is used by individuals as part of social media interactions with thought influencers.  It is used when talking to the media.  Most heinously, it is used by sales people as part of high pressure sales tactics when selling to the end user. Often times, a technical document will need to exist that says “here are things we feel that existing solutions do wrong, and so our altered approach does them this way instead.” This is, however, worlds apart from integrating negative selling, innuendo and outright attacks directly into sales and marketing from the outset. The line between fact and FUD can be blurry. If someone asks you for your honest opinion on a competitor, and for facts to back it up, responding honestly isn’t spreading FUD. It’s answering a direct question honestly. What sets the honourable salesman apart is that they do not seek to instill fear, uncertainty or doubt or incorporate it as part of their regular sales pitch. This is what the clean fight...