MS's Hilf Named Windows Server Marketer

netbuzz writes "The director of Microsoft's Open Source Lab, Bill Hilf, has added a new duty — general manager of Windows server marketing — to his already established role of shepherding the company's efforts to have open source software peacefully coexist with Microsoft technologies. What the company calls a 'natural evolution' of Hilf's job description may not be considered quite so natural among segments of the open source community that eye every Microsoft move with suspicion if not hostility." Bill Hilf answered Slashdot's questions two years back and sounded quite friendly to OSS; yet at other times he has come off like a hardcore Microsoftie.

Comments

Re:It makes sense

[renegadesx]

It's like the creationists.

Spreading FUD form the outside doesn't work so they try spreading it from the inside like creationists try to destroy science by sounding scientific. It works on those that have less knowlege about the facts.

Its interesting that they employ the same tactics

On a side note... I have a suggestion on the "Bill Borg" pic, replace him with the CATS from All Your Base

Re:Corporate Musical Chairs

[Doc Ruby]

Vitriol? It's the truth. And that's what the City Council, like the rest of my serious clients over many years, have me around for. For years, since I helped them become a full committee, with a budget and oversight of NYC's huge IT department.

What do you know of MS execs? Have you ever even met one directly? I bet not. I have, more than one, and this guy was the Chief Security Officer for the entire MS corporation. What about NYC? Have you ever even been here? Been in a City Council committee meeting, whether public or private? Do you even understand that "a city council" like NYC is responsible for security for 10 million people every day, including the UN, 3 giant airports, the country's largest seaport, a $50 BILLION annual city budget? I didn't ask for a "supercoder", but someone who knew something meaningful about security, like what MS did about it six months before under his predecessor would have been reassuring from their Chief Security Officer.

I say you're just talking out of your ass, from someplace tiny that you think is big and "serious", because you don't know what "big and serious" really is. That's not just "vitriol". That's what you get when you push naive BS like that, contradicting a New Yorker like me, who knows the truth, and knows that you don't. Just don't bother telling me that you're in marketing or something like that. Even if you're really a "supercoder".

Re:Corporate Musical Chairs

[Doc Ruby]

You "calm down" or whatever you need to do to read my post properly.

I met at length with Microsoft's Chief Security Officer (as I'm telling you for the third time now). He knew nothing about security. Not even what MS had done about security under his immediate predecessor, which included that BS about "every single MS programmer taking all of January off to do nothing but secure Windows and their apps".

This was in 2004, in NYC, where he was meeting with the NYC legislature (advised by me). We are responsible for security at a level of rigor matched by few governments other than the US Federal government, which also depends on us. So we were, naturally, appalled.

The CSO is not a "marketing exec". Unless it's Microsoft, evidently. Which goes a long way towards explaining why MS is insecure.

Moreover, I used to work closely with one of CMP Publications' top VPs, the one who published _Dr Dobbs Journal_. In the 1990s, he used to help me get gigs in Silicon Valley. And I used to tag along on his meetings with MS execs and other staff (he used to meet with Gates in Redmond several times a month). The entire crew was like that. Some were smart, some were geeks. But they were always there because of either their marketing or legal assets, or (more often, like any other big corp) because they were social animals who could keep their jobs and rise to the top in the group of humans, regardless of what they worked on.

Which is the same as most any big corp. But still one reason that it's dysfunctional, as they all are, except to make lots of money, despite an inferior product. In Microsoft's case, its their monopoly that makes it all go. Which is why they perpetuate their business success with marketing and legal minds, rather than experts in, say, security.

But that's OK for them. Not for customers like, say, New York City.

And people telling me that it is OK for NYC to get the marketing gladhand instead of the security expert are not OK with me. Get it straight: this stuff matters. People's lives are on the line. You think you can flip it off... that's why you are just a MS customer, and I am the NYC City Council's tech advisor.