You say that as though you've read it.
Correct. I did read it.
RTFA -- he doesn't mean criticism == slagging off, he means criticism as is "critical evaluation". What Linux has is a lot of slaggers and very few critical evaluators. All the deconstruction of design decisions are carried out by the dev guys -- there is no detached observer.
Actually most criticism comes from users. True, they're not "detached observer"s, but I don't see a lot of that in any part of the industry. The people who bother to criticise something generally do so because they have some stake in it.
Maybe he's referring to journalists, who are paid to at least appear objective. But I've seen lots of reviews of Linux stuff (including Ubuntu), and they point out both the good and the bad.
Er, no, I really have no problem with criticism of Linux. The article is strange because he thinks there's a currently a lack of criticism, whereas I see tons of it everywhere.
Somehow the author seems to have missed the copious blog posts, mailing list messages, software reviews, and competitor astroturf all criticising Linux.
Indeed. What a strange article.
I would even go so far as to say that Linux (and the Free Software ecosystem that surrounds it) has a lot more critics than closed software - or at least more effective critics.
Large software companies pay PR departments to generate positive coverage. Most Open Source projects have no PR effort behind them at all. So criticism of the software is less likely to be drowned out by astroturf.
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.