English Dictionary: FUD | by the DICT Development Group |
3 results for FUD | |
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: | |
Fud \Fud\, n. [Of uncertain origin.] 1. The tail of a hare, coney, etc. [Prov. Eng. & Scot.] --Burns. 2. Woolen waste, for mixing with mungo and shoddy. | |
From Jargon File (4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000) [jargon]: | |
FUD /fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: "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 idea, of course, was to persuade them 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. See {IBM}. After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly frequently with {Microsoft}, and has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon. | |
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [foldoc]: | |
FUD after he left {IBM} to found his own company: "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 idea, of course, was to persuade them 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. [{Jargon File}] (1995-05-23) |