except they'll have to change the part about going where no camera has gone before. Sure looks corny by todays standards. And Shirley there's room for a remake or maybe part deux.
agreed, the gutsy restricted driver requires you go back to both sideport and UMA video memory instead of just the sideport/onboard memory. This used to work years ago, then recently started working a few months back but now is broken again. WTF, there are probably atleast a few million 200M laptop/mobo users.
but in that case, the purchase wouldn't be instant and sourceforge is FOSS isn't it? Also, they use SVN for SCM and so that means projects could be moved out of sourceforge.net and over to another location. If it's tied to proprietary software in any way then yes, this is a threat.
"Well, yeah. But I think PHP could certainly do with quite a bit of time in maintenance..."
Good one. While I believe there would be a few cases where such events occurred and the project only stalled for a short period of a few years, I believe the net effect would be that this is the exception, not the rule.
If Microsoft went out and started 'attacking' a couple dozen open source projects annually by purchasing up companies behind said projects and effectively shut them off. I don't see a survival rating above 1:12 without some kind of outside help. IMO.
Belize? No, it's called the Microsoft Research Lab and they do this kind of thing all the time. There's non-compete clauses and other ways to prevent the developers from working on anything related for a few years if they don't retire to MS-RL for a pre-determined number of years.
Oh, and about how good it is to pay off these developers so they can start another project, well, they just burned a whole lot of customers who relied on the original project and must now dump it because Microsoft terminated it. Puts a nice sour taste in their mouths and will help keep them going with FOSS for many many years to follow.
I've said it in another post, the only defense from this is to have projects with a diverse and distributed developer base( not everyone in one company ) and/or angeles who fork the project and fund a good number of developers to pick up the project and move it forward while making sure they are involved and committed to the project.
a simple contract requiring the company's developers to stay with Microsoft and/or some non-compete clause. It's really not hard to remove the developers when you rake in billions in profits every quarter off of monopoly products like Windows and MS Office.
Do you really think $10M or $20M means anything to Microsoft if it effectively takes something like PHP or MySQL off the market? Microsoft constantly dumps millions down the toilet just to keep existing MS products going and keep competition away. They've lost over $10 billion on Microsoft Windows CE(PocketPC, Windows Portable, whatever they call it today ). Yes, that said BILLIONs in losses. They've probably lost a couple of billion on Zune and a few billion on Xbox.
As I said, they already make billions monthly off of Windows and MS Office so spending a few measly millions to protect those monopolies is nothing and they've shown they are VERY willing to do this. IMO.
it would also help to remove KDE from the market. KDE is the major alternative to the MS tied Gnome desktop and currently still an option for many distro's which are defaulting to Gnome now. Mono is a threat to all Gnome users since it is based on Microsofts patented.Net software and if Microsoft could show just one line of patened code, KDE would make an instant replacement. Not to mention Novell controls many core Gnome and Mono developers and we know what kind of deal Novell and Microsoft have.
So, Trolltech could be a target. It is really one of the last commercial cross platform C++ frameworks left. Microsoft saw to the termination of all the others in the 90s. IMO.
wrong. Just make the purchase contract contingent on 5 years at MS-Research Lab at $250,000 salary with a $1,000,000 bonus at the end of year 5. Also, make sure that 90% of the company's developers agree to this or the deal is off. This puts incredible pressure on the hold-outs by fellow developers and prevents too many jumping ship to support the forked code.
Microsoft bleeds money they are so filthy rich and buying off many FOSS developers will be like selling icecream to children.
the best defense against this is either a diverse and distributed developer community or corporate backing of forked code. For instance, IBM could probably afford to match the number of lost developers with hired ones or existing internal employees. Google could do the same since they know Microsoft painted a target on their backs a couple of years ago. But, this does help Microsoft somewhat in how it could change the general nature/structure of many FOSS projects if these 'angels' were not careful in how they operated.
Microsoft could create an entire department of We Pay You To Sit Around Programming TicTacToe Games to lure off the major FLOSS developers.
Isn't this the Microsoft Research Lab? IIRC, this was mentioned in the original Halloween Document and after going to a few O'Reilly eTech conferences, it's obvious the MS-RL is just Lego Land for promising researchers. Amusing, keeps them off the streets, but a waste of time otherwise. IMO.
but if you purchase the company containing most of the developers working on the project what do you think that'll do to progress on the forked version?
One of the obvious criteria for purchase would be how effective in destroying the progress of the project would they be. I don't know how much in PHP goes on outside of Zend.com but if there's only a handful of helper developers outside of Zend, purchasing Zend and then taking those core developers off the market would stall the PHP language/project.
Microsoft is not looking to make money on open source and that's just a ridiculous concept given their history. They will use their existing profits to protect the Windows money train just like they have done over the last 20 years. Windows makes them profits and anything which runs on something other than Windows is a threat to their money train. So, protecting the money train by eliminating the threats is what makes them profits. MS-OOXML anybody? That's not kindness of their heart to give an open platform for office apps, it's an attempt to kill off ODF which is an open platform and threatens over 30% of their profits by threatening Microsoft Office.
Anything they purchase will be effectively destroyed to the open source community. That is a given IMO.
What does Microsoft care about changing the license? Do you not realize that first and foremost, Microsoft is likely to just terminate the project?
And I have to wonder how anybody on/. could even give another option a moments notice. Microsoft exists because of Windows and anything they touch gets destroyed if it does not work ONLY with Windows. That's in 20 years of history folks. When Java was knocking on Microsofts door they responded by purchasing promising Java based companies and closing them down. Netscape got the same treatment. Why would anybody not think this was their plan for open source companies they purchased since most open source projects work on more than Windows and that is a threat to Windows? The top level at Microsoft look at everything as a threat first since Microsoft exists because Windows exists and without Windows, they are history.
And the sad thing is that Steve Balmer was the one saying this yet nobody in half the posts mentioned them just terminating the project. WTF?
yes, that's been how it's worked for many many years. In 25+ years, I think the only OS I've run across which got faster between release versions was a version of OS/2( v3/Warp maybe? ).
What would have been more interesting, once they knew the results were not interesting, would have been to test Kubuntu Gutsy and Xubuntu Gutsy. Then, atleast they could show what differences there were with out-of-the-box versions of Ubuntu. And there should have been something to show.
it looks like the problem was that the telecomm give him bogus pricing data for VOIP phone rates. VOIP isn't really a new technology so how much are you going to question/test the software to prove it's worth? After all, as Pogue said, the main selling point of the product was the VOIP calling prices.
If anything, any company that puts out incorrect pricing data on pre-released reviewing materials should be fined and the reviewers should blast them for it and be immune to slander charges. THAT will stop these attempts to use marketing lies to build momentum for bad products. IMO.
it was MS SourceSafe and their documentation on how it does/doesn't work with their other products is a joke. Everything is a marketing doc and it turns out that it couldn't do what my buddy wanted it to do. He asked them about it and they said it could. BTW, I was there for all 8 hours.
Oh, for some reason, those guys would not tell me what software configuration management(SCM) package they are using at Microsoft. The way they laughed on the phone at my question lead me to believe it was not something they tell people and it's not a Microsoft product.
Anyways, I've found that people who make their living on Microsoft are Microsoft to the bone. Hardly worth attempting to tell them about something new/interesting in OSS because if it ain't MS, it doesn't exist. They'll be happy to wait 5-10 years to get it from Microsoft.
I wonder how many more decades it'll take Microsoft to get the OS done? I mean the low level part which interfaces with the hardware and plays between that and the application software. Why is every release "rebuilt from the ground up" and every release requires a complete OS upgrade? It's funny that they are still trying to figure out security after the public internet has been available for over 17 years.
I guess it'll never happen since Balmer seems to think that because hardware has gotten "bigger", they can just keep plowing more and more shit in there and call it a new operating system. Oh, and when the public finds out there are plenty of bugs in the new/rebuilt OS which also are in the older versions, they don't put one and one together to realize there's tons of copying going on. Dumbass customers and an accepted 5 year lifecycle for hardware make Microsoft rich as all heck and the beat goes on.
yup, looks like something hit her in the back of the head right before the camera clicked.
regarding employment, Balmer will be making sure the kid sees alot of value in mommy spending more time at home thinking about why she put Balmer on the spot. Bookmarking the page, setting a calendar event for 3 months from now and will check to see if she's still there. Vegas odds on this?
and that comes with all the virus protection and firewall software you need? Not to mention the database and other parts of the picture? Then yes, $250 isn't that bad for all that.
Still, free is much better and paid support directly from the developers who work on the OSS project is pretty nice. That reminds me of a couple of 4 hour phone conferences with MS developers while a friend was trying to get a Microsoft product working. At the end of the 8th hour, he asked about the last part of the puzzle to get the solution he'd asked about and the MS guys said that the software didn't do that. Eight freak'n hours to get to a goal, which was mentioned in the 1st hour, and the software could not operate as requested. I've never run across that from OSS developers. OSS developers can be assholes to you when you ask dumb questions but they know what is going on. IMO.
sound like the typical MS way of software development. Make it brain-dead simple to click through wizards and get a default setup using as many Windows-only resources as possible. Then, when it's time to grow up from this simple project, developers flail around attempting to figure out how to get stuff working and many never do. But nobody gets fired for choosing Microsoft so they just get assigned to another project.
Oh, and I don't think comparing PHP to MS.Net is appropriate unless you are doing some kind of.Net scripting. Try doing some Java based stuff and see how you like that compared to MS.Net. After all, Java is what Microsoft targetted with their.Net language and frameworks.
first off, ever heard of virtual machines? There are hundreds of pre-configured virtual machines out there( see some here: http://vmware.com/appliances/ ) and sites like rPath( http://www.rpath.com/rbuilder ) even give you a pretty simple way to create your own. And the players are free and you can purchase versions with multi-VM management features for deployment. So there is no hardware cost for either deploying a Linux and OSS solution or just testing it.
Secondly, it just might be time someone learned a little about Linux and OSS because dumping money into MS solutions is so yesterday.
And last, are IT managers dictating tools and they don't know about Linux and OSS? Talk about keeping a blind eye on what's going on in the market. Just the savings in client licenses should be enough to make him/her realize they could do alot more with their budgets with just a little OSS in or outside of virtual machines. And I'm still talking about this being on your Windows boxes.
I know there are still many archaic Windows shops out there so your not alone. The other day I ran into some guys at lunch who use spreadsheets to keep track of version control and bugs. I clued them in on subversion and bugzilla and how they could put those in VM's and start acting like a real shop.
is there nothing anybody can do but keep them from threaten all GNU/Linux vendors livelihood? With public claims of patented materials in GNU/Linux and OSS, Microsoft is damaging every GNU/Linux developer and hardware vendor and this should be illegal. I mean there are laws for libel and slander.
Can't a cease and desist letter be send to Microsoft? Or a letter asking them to list the materials or stop the threats immediately as it is harming business? Just one customer saying that they are holding back on OSS because of Microsoft's threats should be enough to show damage from these threats. Don't care if it's a $50/hr support call, if it provides monetary damages, it should be legal to ask them to show proof. If they refuse legal requests then that should be publicized also.
The can not be allowed to keep doing this without proof.
yup, they are not dumb. Having WAMP, and the like, gives them plenty of space to keep GNU/Linux out of the picture at Windows shops looking at LAMP. WAMP keeps them on Windows and allows Microsofts marketing to move them piece by piece off of WAMP and probably push MS.Net stacks.
Microsoft is getting a fight on the server with GNU/Linux and so they've got to do anything they can to keep Windows on the hardware and as soon as they loose Windows on the hardware, they've lost everything else on those PC's since Microsoft does not sell software for anything but Windows.
neither punished or rewarded, just that he's the best person for the job because of the reasons you stated. He knows the OSS they are fighting against and therefore, he knows how the Windows Server marketing should be spun to leverage what they have. You know, integration with MS Office, nice point-click GUI's and that kind of stuff.
Hilf didn't fill his MS Linux Lab with all kinds of OSS just because he likes Linux and OSS. It was to find their weaknesses and how to spin that into Microsofts strengths. As head of Windows Server marketing, we'll soon see where he feels Microsoft can tell the masses how Windows is better.
Oh, and he never was hired to make Windows interoperate with Linux. He's a Microsoft employee for crying out loud. His job is to sell Windows, protect Window, believe in Windows and not change Windows to allow Linux and OSS to fit on the server anywhere. One Linux server in a Windows shop is deadly to Microsoft and they know this. Hilf was hired to control this. First through education by letting Microsoft employees know what they were fighting against. And secondly, by controlling marketing directly and steering the Microsoft Server marketing people to take advantage of the holes he's learned by running OSS in the MS Linux Lab for the last 3+ years. IMO.
Slashdot Mirror
except they'll have to change the part about going where no camera has gone before. Sure looks corny by todays standards. And Shirley there's room for a remake or maybe part deux.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0060397/trailers-screenplay-E14113-310
agreed, the gutsy restricted driver requires you go back to both sideport and UMA video memory instead of just the sideport/onboard memory. This used to work years ago, then recently started working a few months back but now is broken again. WTF, there are probably atleast a few million 200M laptop/mobo users.
LoB
but in that case, the purchase wouldn't be instant and sourceforge is FOSS isn't it? Also, they use SVN for SCM and so that means projects could be moved out of sourceforge.net and over to another location. If it's tied to proprietary software in any way then yes, this is a threat.
Good point though.
LoB
"Well, yeah. But I think PHP could certainly do with quite a bit of time in maintenance..."
Good one. While I believe there would be a few cases where such events occurred and the project only stalled for a short period of a few years, I believe the net effect would be that this is the exception, not the rule.
If Microsoft went out and started 'attacking' a couple dozen open source projects annually by purchasing up companies behind said projects and effectively shut them off. I don't see a survival rating above 1:12 without some kind of outside help. IMO.
LoB
Belize? No, it's called the Microsoft Research Lab and they do this kind of thing all the time. There's non-compete clauses and other ways to prevent the developers from working on anything related for a few years if they don't retire to MS-RL for a pre-determined number of years.
Oh, and about how good it is to pay off these developers so they can start another project, well, they just burned a whole lot of customers who relied on the original project and must now dump it because Microsoft terminated it. Puts a nice sour taste in their mouths and will help keep them going with FOSS for many many years to follow.
I've said it in another post, the only defense from this is to have projects with a diverse and distributed developer base( not everyone in one company ) and/or angeles who fork the project and fund a good number of developers to pick up the project and move it forward while making sure they are involved and committed to the project.
LoB
Maybe but that's what is called "being in maintenance mode" and is the beginning of the end for any software project.
LoB
a simple contract requiring the company's developers to stay with Microsoft and/or some non-compete clause. It's really not hard to remove the developers when you rake in billions in profits every quarter off of monopoly products like Windows and MS Office.
Do you really think $10M or $20M means anything to Microsoft if it effectively takes something like PHP or MySQL off the market? Microsoft constantly dumps millions down the toilet just to keep existing MS products going and keep competition away. They've lost over $10 billion on Microsoft Windows CE(PocketPC, Windows Portable, whatever they call it today ). Yes, that said BILLIONs in losses. They've probably lost a couple of billion on Zune and a few billion on Xbox.
As I said, they already make billions monthly off of Windows and MS Office so spending a few measly millions to protect those monopolies is nothing and they've shown they are VERY willing to do this. IMO.
LoB
it would also help to remove KDE from the market. KDE is the major alternative to the MS tied Gnome desktop and currently still an option for many distro's which are defaulting to Gnome now. Mono is a threat to all Gnome users since it is based on Microsofts patented .Net software and if Microsoft could show just one line of patened code, KDE would make an instant replacement. Not to mention Novell controls many core Gnome and Mono developers and we know what kind of deal Novell and Microsoft have.
So, Trolltech could be a target. It is really one of the last commercial cross platform C++ frameworks left. Microsoft saw to the termination of all the others in the 90s. IMO.
LoB
wrong. Just make the purchase contract contingent on 5 years at MS-Research Lab at $250,000 salary with a $1,000,000 bonus at the end of year 5. Also, make sure that 90% of the company's developers agree to this or the deal is off. This puts incredible pressure on the hold-outs by fellow developers and prevents too many jumping ship to support the forked code.
Microsoft bleeds money they are so filthy rich and buying off many FOSS developers will be like selling icecream to children.
the best defense against this is either a diverse and distributed developer community or corporate backing of forked code. For instance, IBM could probably afford to match the number of lost developers with hired ones or existing internal employees. Google could do the same since they know Microsoft painted a target on their backs a couple of years ago. But, this does help Microsoft somewhat in how it could change the general nature/structure of many FOSS projects if these 'angels' were not careful in how they operated.
LoB
Isn't this the Microsoft Research Lab? IIRC, this was mentioned in the original Halloween Document and after going to a few O'Reilly eTech conferences, it's obvious the MS-RL is just Lego Land for promising researchers. Amusing, keeps them off the streets, but a waste of time otherwise. IMO.
LoB
but if you purchase the company containing most of the developers working on the project what do you think that'll do to progress on the forked version?
One of the obvious criteria for purchase would be how effective in destroying the progress of the project would they be. I don't know how much in PHP goes on outside of Zend.com but if there's only a handful of helper developers outside of Zend, purchasing Zend and then taking those core developers off the market would stall the PHP language/project.
Microsoft is not looking to make money on open source and that's just a ridiculous concept given their history. They will use their existing profits to protect the Windows money train just like they have done over the last 20 years. Windows makes them profits and anything which runs on something other than Windows is a threat to their money train. So, protecting the money train by eliminating the threats is what makes them profits. MS-OOXML anybody? That's not kindness of their heart to give an open platform for office apps, it's an attempt to kill off ODF which is an open platform and threatens over 30% of their profits by threatening Microsoft Office.
Anything they purchase will be effectively destroyed to the open source community. That is a given IMO.
LoB
What does Microsoft care about changing the license? Do you not realize that first and foremost, Microsoft is likely to just terminate the project?
/. could even give another option a moments notice. Microsoft exists because of Windows and anything they touch gets destroyed if it does not work ONLY with Windows. That's in 20 years of history folks. When Java was knocking on Microsofts door they responded by purchasing promising Java based companies and closing them down. Netscape got the same treatment. Why would anybody not think this was their plan for open source companies they purchased since most open source projects work on more than Windows and that is a threat to Windows? The top level at Microsoft look at everything as a threat first since Microsoft exists because Windows exists and without Windows, they are history.
And I have to wonder how anybody on
And the sad thing is that Steve Balmer was the one saying this yet nobody in half the posts mentioned them just terminating the project. WTF?
LoB
yes, that's been how it's worked for many many years. In 25+ years, I think the only OS I've run across which got faster between release versions was a version of OS/2( v3/Warp maybe? ).
What would have been more interesting, once they knew the results were not interesting, would have been to test Kubuntu Gutsy and Xubuntu Gutsy. Then, atleast they could show what differences there were with out-of-the-box versions of Ubuntu. And there should have been something to show.
LoB
it looks like the problem was that the telecomm give him bogus pricing data for VOIP phone rates. VOIP isn't really a new technology so how much are you going to question/test the software to prove it's worth? After all, as Pogue said, the main selling point of the product was the VOIP calling prices.
If anything, any company that puts out incorrect pricing data on pre-released reviewing materials should be fined and the reviewers should blast them for it and be immune to slander charges. THAT will stop these attempts to use marketing lies to build momentum for bad products. IMO.
LoB
in the context of my comment, archaic Windows shops are those who don't look outside of Microsoft for solutions.
And I guess somehow I should believe that Microsoft solutions are always the best? WTF...
LoB
it was MS SourceSafe and their documentation on how it does/doesn't work with their other products is a joke. Everything is a marketing doc and it turns out that it couldn't do what my buddy wanted it to do. He asked them about it and they said it could. BTW, I was there for all 8 hours.
Oh, for some reason, those guys would not tell me what software configuration management(SCM) package they are using at Microsoft. The way they laughed on the phone at my question lead me to believe it was not something they tell people and it's not a Microsoft product.
Anyways, I've found that people who make their living on Microsoft are Microsoft to the bone. Hardly worth attempting to tell them about something new/interesting in OSS because if it ain't MS, it doesn't exist. They'll be happy to wait 5-10 years to get it from Microsoft.
LoB
I wonder how many more decades it'll take Microsoft to get the OS done? I mean the low level part which interfaces with the hardware and plays between that and the application software. Why is every release "rebuilt from the ground up" and every release requires a complete OS upgrade? It's funny that they are still trying to figure out security after the public internet has been available for over 17 years.
I guess it'll never happen since Balmer seems to think that because hardware has gotten "bigger", they can just keep plowing more and more shit in there and call it a new operating system. Oh, and when the public finds out there are plenty of bugs in the new/rebuilt OS which also are in the older versions, they don't put one and one together to realize there's tons of copying going on. Dumbass customers and an accepted 5 year lifecycle for hardware make Microsoft rich as all heck and the beat goes on.
LoB
yup, looks like something hit her in the back of the head right before the camera clicked.
regarding employment, Balmer will be making sure the kid sees alot of value in mommy spending more time at home thinking about why she put Balmer on the spot. Bookmarking the page, setting a calendar event for 3 months from now and will check to see if she's still there. Vegas odds on this?
LoB
and that comes with all the virus protection and firewall software you need? Not to mention the database and other parts of the picture? Then yes, $250 isn't that bad for all that.
Still, free is much better and paid support directly from the developers who work on the OSS project is pretty nice. That reminds me of a couple of 4 hour phone conferences with MS developers while a friend was trying to get a Microsoft product working. At the end of the 8th hour, he asked about the last part of the puzzle to get the solution he'd asked about and the MS guys said that the software didn't do that. Eight freak'n hours to get to a goal, which was mentioned in the 1st hour, and the software could not operate as requested. I've never run across that from OSS developers. OSS developers can be assholes to you when you ask dumb questions but they know what is going on. IMO.
LoB
sound like the typical MS way of software development. Make it brain-dead simple to click through wizards and get a default setup using as many Windows-only resources as possible. Then, when it's time to grow up from this simple project, developers flail around attempting to figure out how to get stuff working and many never do. But nobody gets fired for choosing Microsoft so they just get assigned to another project.
.Net is appropriate unless you are doing some kind of .Net scripting. Try doing some Java based stuff and see how you like that compared to MS .Net. After all, Java is what Microsoft targetted with their .Net language and frameworks.
Oh, and I don't think comparing PHP to MS
LoB
first off, ever heard of virtual machines? There are hundreds of pre-configured virtual machines out there( see some here: http://vmware.com/appliances/ ) and sites like rPath( http://www.rpath.com/rbuilder ) even give you a pretty simple way to create your own. And the players are free and you can purchase versions with multi-VM management features for deployment. So there is no hardware cost for either deploying a Linux and OSS solution or just testing it.
Secondly, it just might be time someone learned a little about Linux and OSS because dumping money into MS solutions is so yesterday.
And last, are IT managers dictating tools and they don't know about Linux and OSS? Talk about keeping a blind eye on what's going on in the market. Just the savings in client licenses should be enough to make him/her realize they could do alot more with their budgets with just a little OSS in or outside of virtual machines. And I'm still talking about this being on your Windows boxes.
I know there are still many archaic Windows shops out there so your not alone. The other day I ran into some guys at lunch who use spreadsheets to keep track of version control and bugs. I clued them in on subversion and bugzilla and how they could put those in VM's and start acting like a real shop.
LoB
so you're paying out the nose, ears, ass for Windows and MS IIS and you care about free fastCGI?
And IMO, it may be free as in beer but it's poisoned beer by virtue of where it plays.
LoB
is there nothing anybody can do but keep them from threaten all GNU/Linux vendors livelihood? With public claims of patented materials in GNU/Linux and OSS, Microsoft is damaging every GNU/Linux developer and hardware vendor and this should be illegal. I mean there are laws for libel and slander.
Can't a cease and desist letter be send to Microsoft? Or a letter asking them to list the materials or stop the threats immediately as it is harming business? Just one customer saying that they are holding back on OSS because of Microsoft's threats should be enough to show damage from these threats. Don't care if it's a $50/hr support call, if it provides monetary damages, it should be legal to ask them to show proof. If they refuse legal requests then that should be publicized also.
The can not be allowed to keep doing this without proof.
LoB
yup, they are not dumb. Having WAMP, and the like, gives them plenty of space to keep GNU/Linux out of the picture at Windows shops looking at LAMP. WAMP keeps them on Windows and allows Microsofts marketing to move them piece by piece off of WAMP and probably push MS .Net stacks.
Microsoft is getting a fight on the server with GNU/Linux and so they've got to do anything they can to keep Windows on the hardware and as soon as they loose Windows on the hardware, they've lost everything else on those PC's since Microsoft does not sell software for anything but Windows.
LoB
neither punished or rewarded, just that he's the best person for the job because of the reasons you stated. He knows the OSS they are fighting against and therefore, he knows how the Windows Server marketing should be spun to leverage what they have. You know, integration with MS Office, nice point-click GUI's and that kind of stuff.
Hilf didn't fill his MS Linux Lab with all kinds of OSS just because he likes Linux and OSS. It was to find their weaknesses and how to spin that into Microsofts strengths. As head of Windows Server marketing, we'll soon see where he feels Microsoft can tell the masses how Windows is better.
Oh, and he never was hired to make Windows interoperate with Linux. He's a Microsoft employee for crying out loud. His job is to sell Windows, protect Window, believe in Windows and not change Windows to allow Linux and OSS to fit on the server anywhere. One Linux server in a Windows shop is deadly to Microsoft and they know this. Hilf was hired to control this. First through education by letting Microsoft employees know what they were fighting against. And secondly, by controlling marketing directly and steering the Microsoft Server marketing people to take advantage of the holes he's learned by running OSS in the MS Linux Lab for the last 3+ years. IMO.
LoB