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Open Source Guy Takes the Hardest Job At Microsoft
jbrodkin writes "Gianugo Rabellino, founder of the Italian Linux Society and a key member of the Apache Software Foundation, traded his Linux and Mac PCs in for a Windows 7 laptop and took on a newly created job at Microsoft designed to encourage collaboration between Redmond and open source communities. 'Developers nowadays are mostly to be found in the open source world,' the new Microsoft executive says. 'We need to go where they are.' With Rabellino's help, Microsoft is expanding its successful partnership with PHP developers , but Steve Ballmer and crew are a long way from completely erasing their poor reputation in Linux and open source circles."
It's a trap!
Successful partnership between Microsoft and PHP developers. What could possibly go wrong?
Mostly harmless.
If I remember correctly there was some guy name Bill Milf who had a similar position. Did that ever amount to anything?
Steve Ballmer is the same type of creep as George W. Bush or David Cameron. Instead of Open Source think Compassionate Conservatism or Big Society. It's all the same thing and just a way to market useful idiots as being in the club and get them to work for free. If it doesn't make them and their pals a profit (or reduce a loss) they'll hang you out to dry the second the going gets difficult.
How about instead of selling out to these toffs people learn management, marketing, and finance themselves so they can provide a better alternative? Microsoft, the Republicans, and the Tories will never change. They just want to be top dog and don't care how they do it. Anyone who things they have changed is wasting their time. It's the 1930's all over again.
I mean, I don't know this guy personally, so it's not an attack on him, but MS has hired various "open source" people in the past, and what do we get?
MS pays Nokia to drop KDE and MeeGo. MS pays Novell to develop a C# and .Net stuff (which prevents the antitrust commission calling them a monopoly), and when Novell goes bust, MS buys their patents.
I don't see any indication that this hire is any good news for us.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
No one wants to take a drink from it, no matter how thoroughly they claim to have cleaned it.
It's not the hardest job in MS. It's a PR stunt. Just being hired is already a win for MS.
The hardest job at MS would be their security experts. Imagine trying to do a job and having every last move you make either neutered or cancelled entirely by Marketing.
MS has a small army of highly skilled people. They could definitely produce higher quality software. I believe they could make malware a rarity if they really wanted to do it. But what's their incentive when you can make billions without going to all the trouble?
The only reason MS is being so nice lately is they're more irrelevant than ever. Microsoft can handle being loved and they can handle being hated. What they don't want to face is being ignored. They're hardly obscure yet but they are long-term strategic thinkers so they realize that things are moving in that direction, in baby steps at the moment. The real interesting stuff is coming from Google and Apple while Microsoft is stagnating. Windows 7 is nice but it's not the giant improvement that XP was over Win98. Even the XBox360 is showing its age.
When things were going so well for MS and the industry was very interested in what they were doing, we got to see how much of a dick they can be. If they start innovating again you can expect their attitude about Open Source to go back to the "Halloween documents" days. I hope Mr. Rabellino understands one thing very well: if you get in bed with Microsoft, you're going to get fucked.
You know, even if Microsoft really has turned over a new leaf and really has a sincere desire to honestly work with Open Source, even if this really isn't a trap of the "embrace and extend" sort ... their past behavior makes them unworthy of our cooperation. They have about ten years of complete asshattery to undo and all of the people who perpetrated that are still running the company, particularly Ballmer. Maybe this is like politics where people have horribly short memories.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Anyone remember when Daniel Robbins (founder of Gentoo Linux) went to work for MS?
From Wikipedia
Robbins' move to Microsoft, on 13 June 2005, attracted attention[15][16] within the Linux community, which has historically had a combative relationship with Microsoft. He described his role working for Bill Hilf as "...helping Microsoft to understand Open Source and community-based projects..."[17]
However, Robbins resigned less than a year later on 16 January 2006 due to frustrations that he was unable to fully utilize his technical skills in this position. His new job is at ABC Coding Solutions where he will be focused on building in .NET on Windows.[18]
I'm quite certain he browses Slashdot, perhaps he could chime in on what Microsoft has been up to?
According to TFA, 'Rabellino's main focus right now "is to enable PHP to shine on our platforms."'
So, he's there to get people to migrate from LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) systems to WIMP (Windows, IIS, MS-SQL, PHP) systems.
Microsoft knows the FOSS community has some power now. So instead of their old tactics, they're trying to be nice. Diplomatic.
As in, diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst you find a rock.
Microsoft is evil, blah blah blah, but if people really want open source alternatives to make any progress with regular people, they need to gain mindshare.
open source alternatives dont need to make progress with regular people in web development scene - that scene is already OWNED by open source. the amount and variety of apps on lamp stack (linux apache mysql php - insert postgres sometimes), and their usage is so huge and so varied. this is what causing microsoft to try to bring all those small and medium businesses (and recently big ones) that got out of their hands in regard to web presence, back to microsoft platforms.
the summary is - all this is pointless. there is no reason for anyone, developers and clients alike, to move to microsoft's platforms. everything is free on lamp stack. even if you go VERY big, and start to cluster servers and then have to employ server farms. all you need to pay for is development of your app. no licenses, no other shit. and, development is quite cheap, because the php dev scene is big.
there is nothing microsoft can offer to open source community in this field.
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