[Ads-l] fud

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

In her excellent article, Nancy mentioned the linkage of FUD to the
prominent computer architect Gene Amdahl, as noted in "The New
Hacker's Dictionary".

Year: 1991
Book Title: The New Hacker's Dictionary
Editor: Eric S. Raymond
Entry: FUD
Quote Page 170
Publisher: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

[Begin excerpt]
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.
[End excerpt]

I am not sure where the quotation attributed to Amdahl in "The New
Hacker's Dictionary" appeared. Below is a citation which indicates
that Gene Amdahl used the term FUD by 1979.

Date: March 29, 1979
Trade Journal: Computer Weekly
Article: Clash of mainframers
Quote Page 1, Column 3
Publisher: IPC Electrical Electronic Press Ltd., London
Database: Internet Archive archive.org
https://archive.org/details/sim_computer-weekly_1979-03-29_646/mode/2up

[Begin excerpt]
Arch enemies in the mainframe market, Gene Amdahl, founder of the
Amdahl Corp. and Jacques Maisonrouge, chairman of IBM's World Trade
Corp, crossed swords in public last week, after Amdahl had described
IBM's marketing techniques as FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 1:00 PM Nancy Friedman
<00001b7f50001087-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> I wrote about the history of FUD last year:
> https://fritinancy.substack.com/p/word-of-the-week-doubt
>
> There's a long Wikipedia entry on FUD, which traces "fear, uncertainty, and
> doubt" -- but not the acronym -- to Catholic publications in the 1920s.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt
>
>
> Nancy Friedman
> Chief Wordworker
> web: wordworking.com <http://www.wordworking.com>
> substack https://fritinancy.substack.com/
> Medium <https://medium.com/@wordworking>
>
> tel 510 652-4159
> cel 510 304-3953
> bluesky/mastodon/instagram  Fritinancy

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