Microsoft and 'An Open and Honest Discussion'?

Simon Brooke asks: "I have today received from Microsoft a flyer about an event entitled 'Microsoft and Open Source 20/20 Seminar: An open and honest technology discussion'. Microsoft are touting one of their speakers as an 'independent analyst'. All the other speakers are either Microsoft employees or represent businesses related to Microsoft. The 'independent' speaker is Philip Dawson of Meta Group, and his job title is given as 'Senior Program Director, International Infrastructure Strategies'. He's described as 'a leading authority on Linux, high end UNIX, Windows server platforms and storage'. Among the 'seminar benefits' is listed 'question the platform and Linux technical experts' so clearly their pitch will be to present this guy is a 'Linux technical expert'. Anyone prepared to help me out here? Have Microsoft held similar events in your part of the world, and if so how did you respond? Do you have any scoop on Mr Dawson?" Sounds like more par for the course from Microsoft. Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to go into these things armed with more information...that is if you are in to events like these. "The event (which is free) is being held on:

• 10th June - London
• 17th June - Edinburgh
• 29th June - Manchester
• 7th July - Newport

There's more about it and a sign-up form here.

Consequently it would help enormously if people going to the event had some low-down on this guy. He's apparently written a recent report entitled 'Linux Adoption: An OS for the Masses?' but unfortunately it seems you have to pay chunky amounts of money to get access to it. It would be extremely interesting if someone had read it, particularly if it contained factual errors or obvious misinformation. It would also be interesting to know in what ways he has worked with or for Microsoft in the past."

Comments

Relax

[blackwater]

How many ways does it have to be said: open source is winning so let's just relax. It should go without saying but most people at MS are just, erm, people with the same interests, ideals and values as everyone else. I know it's amusing (not least to me) to demonise them but I think that is a tad unfair.

I once had a MS guy wheeled in to tell me that J2EE was fundamentally broken and that he'd spent 2 years at Barclays bank (it's a UK high-street bank) trying to get it to work and it just wouldn't. This went on for 30 mins or so. Then I invited him to come around the corner (literally) and see the J2EE-based demo my team had put together in the previous 2 days...

I suppose the point is that all companies are basically all about winning contracts and never mind the truth. It sounds stupid to be pointing that out as I'm sure 99% of you deal with that in your daily working life. Yes, MS as a corporation is particularly ruthless but let's not get carried away. They are just the ultimate embodiment of what most corporations would like to be. Don't kid yourself that Apple, Oracle or whoever wouldn't be as evil if they could only figure out how. Well, IMO. If I'm wrong then great. Seriously.

Re:Relax

[Graelin]

How many ways does it have to be said: open source is winning so let's just relax.

It's not clear that open source is winning. Small battles here and there surely but the war is far from over.

Even if it were, the OS community should never "relax." This is business, and business is tough. Let your guard down at the wrong time and it's game over.

Re:Relax

[j3ll0]

Hmmmm...ya know, sometimes the rabid advocacy doesn't make sense to me.

I've deployed FreeBSD at client sites, I've deployed Linux at client sites, and I've deployed MS stuff at client sites. You know what the kicker is? You gotta pick the solution for the problem. I've lost count of the times I've thrown in a quick FreeBSD, PHP, MySQL solution to solve a problem, and I've done the same with Linux....

The problem is, you rabid *nix d00dz want OSS installed for everything. I'm sorry....point me at the OSS equivalent of Sharepoint and I'll start deploying that. But until there exists an OSS equivalent of genuinely innovative stuff like this, then Sharepoint is the solution.

You can bitch and moan about MS insecurity, but at the end of the day, if you know your job as a network\system engineer, those problems go away.

As far as open viewpoints go, yep....some of those MS solutions address problems that the zealots haven't even thought of...even MS is allowed to tell us about them

Re:Relax

[Dunkirk]

I'm sorry....point me at the OSS equivalent of Sharepoint and I'll start deploying that.

Plone. Now start deploying that.

But seriously, I had a very high-level IT manager complain that she wanted to replace a home-grown collaboration-site-creation web application with the more polished and integrated SharePoint, but that the costs were enormous. (If you really have installed it for clients, you have already gone through this exercise. For my Fortune 250 company, this is going to range into about a half a million dollars, not counting the hardware and other infrastructure.) Unfortunately, Plone only does a little more than what our home-grown app does, but I throw this out there so that other people can benefit from the technology that 1) don't have a ton of money for it and 2) don't have a talented web development group. Plone does most of what SharePoint does. It only lacks the usual Microsoft lockin..., er, integration.

Interesting Tactic: Pay Per View FUD:

[the_other_one]

If you pay for it it must be true. Mega Corporations paid to create^H^H^H^H^H^H find this truth for you.

If your opponents generally can't afford to view your FUD before you present it with a paid shill arguing your opponents view point then your truth shall reign uncontestible...

Well that's just my take on the matter. But then again I thought the Maginot Line was a good idea (tactically speaking).

Meta rank themselves among the FUDmeisters

[leonbrooks]

Several of their consultants (Kevin McIsaac comes to mind) have been damning Linux with faint praise for a very long time. I don't know if that converts the leadin from "prejudicial" to "going in with your eyes open" or not, but it certainly raises its point average in my eyes. (-: