---
title: "My First Gartner Cease And Desist: the missing link"
date: 2006-07-11T22:25:04Z
modified: 2006-07-11T22:25:04Z
permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/my-first-gartner-cease-and-desist-the-missing-link/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 657
categories:
  - Uncategorized
timestamp: 2006-07-11T22:25:04Z
tags:
  - Uncategorized
---

[James Governor’s MonkChips: On Sample Sizes for Magic Quadrants](http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/001870.html "James Governor's MonkChips: On Sample Sizes for Magic Quadrants")

[Its about time, I guess](http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000833.html). Last Thursday I received an email, strangely enough from Gartner’s Vendor Relations department, asking me to remove a link from monkchips, because it apparently constituted “unauthorised use”.

So wait a second. I can’t post a URL to a Gartner site? What exactly would be the penalty for doing so?

Vendor relations? I am not a vendor.

Shouldn’t it be the responsibility of Gartner, and in this case SAS, to protect their intellectual property? I mean that’s what firewalls and registration mechanisms are for, isn’t it?

The irony is that I was going to follow up and say what good work Gartner had done, with a new and improved, and most importantly _formally documented_, methodology for the Magic Quadrant.

I can’t point you to the useful resource however. Well I can- it would be interesting to see Gartner find a way to punish me for publishing a url. But I think I am doing quite enough of Gartner’s marketing here already.

This isn’t even a Big Co pushes small co around story.. its really too silly for that. I am certainly not looking for any sympathy (although a couple of blog posts wouldn’t go amiss!). I do however suggest SAS and Gartner go and work it out between themselves. As of now the “issue” still remains – the “missing link” is still in the wild. Its really not my problem. Well done Gartner with the new transparency – its just a shame nobody can see it.

Whatever you do don’t go check out [SAS.com](http://sas.com/) for this information: who knows what rules you’ll break if you do.

In case you’re wondering – our library is free. Its not extensive, but it has zero barriers to participation. We want people to read our stuff and make their own contributions.

![](http://static.flickr.com/72/187295499_d1a3d4005a.jpg?v=0)