Slashdot Mirror
Meet Microsoft's Linux Lab Head Bill Hilf
morcego writes "Yahoo News has a very interesting interview with Bill Hilf, Microsoft's director of Microsoft's platform technology strategy group, who in turn works for Martin Taylor, Microsoft's general manager of platform strategy and Linux point man. From the interview: '"I am a non-Microsoft guy working at Microsoft," Hilf said.'"
I just RTFA, and there is no content at all.
Let me summarize for you:
Bill Hilf works for Microsoft, reporting on the progress and direction of the open source projects and the OSS community in general.
There, now you can go do something more important than read this article.
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer - alternatively, KNOW YOUR ENEMY. Or, how about "do unto others, but first cover your butt."
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nice logic there.
So next time I buy a mosquito repellant it means I don't get sleep over the horros of insect invasions.
The marketing stuff that you see from them is written by a small subset of the company, and it's generally written with one goal in mind -- to benefit Microsoft. They aren't worried about giving the alternatives a fair treatment, unless they think that that will benefit them somehow.
Overall, Microsoft may be the `enemy', but the individual employees certainly aren't. They're just average working people like those working at any other software company.
Seriously, though, I think it's funny that Microsoft needs to have a position like this. Maybe they'd be better off letting all employees spend 20% of their paid time reading about Linux and the most popular F/OSS programs out there. They might learn a thing or two (probably two) about how to code software that actually works. And then Microsoft wouldn't be throwing their money away.
Am I correct that Linux is "similar enough" to Windows?
These days it isn't terribly important that platforms resemble each other that much. Applications just need some common APIs and little elbow grease to smooth over the things APIs don't cover. Just about every major FOSS app can be run on Windows. To the extent that developers are responsible for interoperability, the FOSS world has done its part.
Another way to take this is that MS must not be very good at making clean code if they're incapable of writing to our platform yet we can write to theirs. Since they like to fling FUD so much, that might be a good bit to throw their way.
But most of the `true Linux experts' out there still have mouths to feed and like their sports cars and such, and if Microsoft were to offer them enough money, at least some of them would work for Microsoft. I would if they offered enough money, though I'm somewhere between L++ and L+++ in my geek code block so I probably don't count.
And I can easily see how a `Linux expert' might even justify working for Microsoft -- he might see it as a way to infiltrate Microsoft from within, perhaps influence their corporate culture, help make them a better company. (Yes, I think this is unlikely, but he might justify it like that anyways.) And while I'm certainly a OSS advocate, I still think that any improvements in Microsoft software will benefit the computing community as a whole, and if a Linux expert can help improve their software, I think this would be a good thing for him to do.
There may be a few people there like that, but I certainly do believe that most people there are just normal, every day people who do their job so they will get paid. And if they can do something to improve the world, that's a nice bonus, but mostly they're just there to get paid, just like the rest of the world.And I don't think that Microsoft is so much more evil than any other software company, it's just that they are in a position where their actions have a lot more effect on things, so people watch them more closely.
Are you referring to this incident? If so, that's a long stretch from what you said. Yes, Microsoft's reaction was extreme, but it's not quite what you suggested. He certainly did more than mention that Microsoft uses Macs.Microsoft's interoperability problems tend to stem not from outright sabotage of protocols, but from just not giving a shit.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
they couldn't beat or break open source
so now they have to work with it
makes sense really -- for years they had no serious competition -- they still don't on the desktop
but the mac's recent resurgence on the desktop and the rise of linux and BSD on servers has to be dealt with -- how could microsoft not have an OSS and OS X lab?
shooting is not too good for my enemies
actually, he probably intentionally avoided another, better question : when will microsoft _really_ start doing something to increase interoperability instead of trying to make it as hard as possible for everybody else ?
stop using some half-assed closed crap (active-x), add support for opendocument, document native msoffic formats, smb etc - but that would make you compete on real benefits, not lock-in. oh no, we can't afford that.
Rich
While I agree that exclusivity is greedily sought by companies, there's nothing contradictory between interoperability and exclusive features. One can sell an application providing both, since it's the latter that boost the sales (and sometimes the former).
It's when you don't have anything exlusive anymore that interoperability becomes a hurdle in keeping good selling figures. And thus companies look for customer lock-in to avoid having to innovate all the time, which is harder to do.