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.'"

Comments

Useless article!

[dbretton]

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.

Re:So let me get the right...

[drinkypoo]

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer - alternatively, KNOW YOUR ENEMY. Or, how about "do unto others, but first cover your butt."

Re:Good to know

[dougmc]

It's nice to know that at least somebody there has some understanding of open source/Linux/alternatives.

Microsoft is a large company. I'll bet there's hundreds of employees there that have a good understanding of open source alternatives. There's probably even some employees who regularly contribute to some open source projects, unless Microsoft policy actively prohibits it.

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.

Re:Good to know

[dougmc]

Bullshit! - Microsoft on more than 1 occasion had to hire people through other companies because they couldnt find true Linux experts that would work for them.

Ok, fine -- perhaps Microsoft couldn't get Linus or Alan Cox to work for them, at any price. Maybe, maybe not.

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.

The individuals who work at Microsoft are either ignorant, desperate or believe there should be a fascist monopoly in the operating system market.

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.

The good average guys are thrown out for mentioning Microsoft uses Apple Mac.

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.