Microsoft Cracking Open the Door To OSS

AlexGr sends us to a long piece in Redmond Magazine on Microsoft's changing relationship to open source. The article centers around a profile of Bill Hilf, Microsoft's internal and external evangelist for OSS. It's an even-handed piece that fully reflects the continuing deep skepticism in the community of Microsoft's motives and actions.

Comments

Re:Accomplishments?

[Anonymous Coward]

From http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/tnradio /bio/billhilf.mspx:

"Prior to joining Microsoft, Bill led IBM's Linux/Open Source Software technical strategy at a world-wide level for the Emerging and Competitive markets organization, in addition to his direct customer interaction as a senior enterprise architect. Bill has been involved with Open Source Software (OSS) for over twelve years, and is an IEEE Distinguished Visitor on the subject of OSS."

What have YOU done for OSS? You OSS zealots (particularly twitter) are doing more harm than good.

Re:Accomplishments?

[Anonymous Coward]

What have YOU done for OSS? You OSS zealots (particularly twitter) are doing more harm than good.

What have I done? Well, I can tell you that I have released countless poorly coded, undocumented, utterly crappy programs to sourceforge. So THERE!

And did I mention the god awful GUI interfaces. Geez. Show some respect!

Re:Accomplishments?

[consumer]

I can vouch for Bill's work on open source. We worked together at a web startup before he went to IBM. We mostly worked on a LAMP platform based around mod_perl, and he put a lot of effort into making sure that our patches to the open source code we used (and there were quite a few) were contributed back. We presented a paper together at an OSS conference about the work we did there. He's the real deal.

M$ Accomplishments? Another nice thing ruined.

[twitter]

What have YOU done for OSS? You OSS zealots (particularly twitter) are doing more harm than good.

Advocating freedom never hurts anyone in a free society, but thanks for thinking of me. I love you guys, and all this new M$ tone that spews forth here.

What you say about Mr. Hilf may be true, but I'd like to know what he's done since joining M$. The article is a collection of confusing propaganda, more inflammatory than informative, and I hope it does not really reflect Mr. Hilf's beliefs:

When Bill Hilf came from IBM Corp. to join Microsoft three years ago, the company's stance on open source vacillated wildly. It would swing from outright indifference to overt nastiness. Today, something else is unfolding: Microsoft is striking a surprising balance. It has stopped dismissing open source licensing and community development as dangerous folly or evil foe, and is looking for a way to both compete and co-exist.

...

Before we start singing Kumbaya, let's state clearly it's inconceivable that Microsoft's efforts around open source have yet been widely greeted as sincere, altruistic or even legitimate by a large faction of the open source community.

Nice flame but not much content. Mr. Hilf's "dirty little secret" comment about most people being forced to run M$ first, without mention of the Federally proved monopoly, is more of the same. Oh wow, this is rich:

"I ask those folks, 'How often has Microsoft sued over IP?' The answer is two [times]," he says. "We are not a patent troll company. We protect our IP and our licenses, but we do not want to litigate."

The company responsible for the fiaSCO that's threatening everyone that they own patents on everything is not a troll? OK, that's enough fantasy reading for me today. Mr. Hilf is not the first nice thing that M$ has bought and ruined.

If these things don't reflect Mr. Hilf's opinion, let it be a lesson for those who consider working for "the enemy". they will use you and hang whatever opinion around your neck they please before they dismiss you.