Developers As Pawns and One-Night Stands

jcatcw writes "At the Comes vs. Microsoft antitrust case, last Friday's testimony included evidence that James Plamondon, a Microsoft technical evangelist, in a 1996 speech referred to independent software developers as 'pawns' and compared wooing them to trying to win over a one-night stand. Last week's proceedings also included testimony by Ronald Alepin, a former CTO at Fujitsu Software Corp. and currently an adviser to the law firm Morrison Foerster LLP. He said that Lotus 1-2-3 was killed, in part, by Microsoft encouraging Lotus's programmers to use the Windows API even though Microsoft's own developers found it too complicated to use." The plaintiffs have created a site that includes transcripts of testimony presented in the case.

Comments

Woo

[somersault]

Yay for Microsoft bashing.

The API thing is hilarious though, if it's true..

Developers, developers, developers

[Oddscurity]

Witness for yourself the l33t powers of Microsoft's wooing. Not exactly worrying, is it?

And I'll be throwing chairs

[ettlz]

in paroxysms of passion. "One-night stands! One-night stands! One-night stands! One-night stands!"

Re:And I'll be throwing chairs

[ettlz]

You either (a) are being disingenuous; (b) are well self-controlled; or (c) frequent this place enough to have a username by now.

Re:It's just the name of the game

[MaggieL]

Were Java developers any better off until the recent open sourcing of Java? Not really. Neither were most independent developers. When you do that work, you are tying part of your future to another company's good will....

Some companies' good will was somewhat more credible than a "one-night stand" even before Java was open-sourced.

Re: Removes it???

[baadger]

So if working with Microsoft is a one night stand, isn't doing Open Source like doing 500 guy gangbang?

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[CastrTroy]

Reverse engineers? Are those like the reverse vampires who only go out in the day?

One-night stand?

[AutopsyReport]

I have high standards, you insensitive clod!

You must be a daemon in the sack.
You must be agile.
No time for debugging your problems.
I will not use a trojan horse.
Time slicing with others is not okay.
Don't ever call my thing a widget.

Youtube link

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'm in Brazil, you insensitive clod!

Ironic MS Ad

[mysqlrocks]

Anybody else get the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 ad on this Slashdot article (screen shot below)?

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h165/bradley1976 /slashdot_ms.jpg

"One night stand" metaphor is very apt

[david.emery]

Of course, the whole point of a one-night-stand is to get fucked.

        dave

from ballmer.c

[Jesus_666]

[...]
try {
while (true) {
audience << "Developers! ";
}
}
catch (...) {
throw (new Chair());
}
[...]

By the way, /. really needs <pre> support in user comments. <ecode> just doesn't cut it. (Alternatively, make the latter use the former or come up with another way to preserve indentation.)

Re: Removes it???

[Jesus_666]

Somehow I think "It's the gay bukkake of software engineering!" is not a slogan that will win over many folks for Open Source development...

One night stand with Microsoft?

[mmmmbeer]

Sounds like a perfect way to get a virus.