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Meet Microsoft's Linux Lab Head Bill Hilf

Posted by timothy on from the eye-on-the-competition dept.

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.'"

6 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Traitor! by Jarn_Firebrand · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bill Hilf is a TRAITOR! Lets tar and feather him! Have him drawn and quartered! Send him off the plank! Put him in an iron maiden!

    --
    Grammar Nazi
    1. Re:Traitor! by moranar · · Score: 5, Funny

      Lets tar and feather him!

      Proper custom asks for him to be tarred and bzip2ed.

      --
      "I think it would be a good idea!"
      Gandhi, about Internet Security
  2. Re:Useless article! by rharris · · Score: 5, Funny

    Agreed. Had he been a non-microsoft guy working at microsoft with a chainsaw, then we'd have had something. :)

    --
    "It's like my pool is TEARIN' ASS 'round my backyard!" --Carl, From Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
  3. Hilf? by Gzip+Christ · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hilf? As in "hacker I'd like to fuck"?

  4. he added.... by mshiltonj · · Score: 5, Funny

    "We get to find out lots of interesting things -- like how to authenticate against Active Directory, how to run non-Microsoft mail clients with Exchange," and the like, [Bill Hilf] said.

    "Once we figure a way to for other products to interoperate with Microsoft, my job is to modify our product so the other products won't work," he added. "It's helps a great deal when I get to look at our competitors code, but they can't see ours."

    At this point, he chuckled a bit to himself while twisting his pencil-thin mustache with his fingers.

    --
    Software Wars
  5. Re:Good to know by dougmc · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.