A tour of the Microsoft open source lab

Don't really worry about that. There are two kinds of OSS people. The first are those who are
most of the time busy doing real work and you won't find them in those kind of flames.

The second is just people with _lots_ of free time who like to play the "us and them" game.
a.k.a, slashdot, digg, (some little portion of LWN comments when the article is _non_
technical, LWN can't be blamed for this portion though).

I'm sure Corbet had a good point in his mind to post this article.

You are a Senior Director of Open Source and Linux Strategy at Microsoft, and you are posting
a comment as a "guest" on LWN.net.

A bit stingy to get an LWN.net Corporate account?

"""
I realize you have many frustrations with the company's history,
"""

Oh?  All in the past now, is it?  

And Stephen's work led to the discussions with Samba? Are you sure that pending
multi-hundred-billion euro fines from the EU didn't influence the decision just a bit?  At
least we know now that $1.4 billion is the threshold where MS actually notices.  I don't
believe that the treachery is intended, by your company, to be "all in the past".  But I am
hopeful that with the help of ongoing investigations and watchdog efforts by the EU, that the
treachery *will* end here and now, for good.  Finally, someone had the guts and the clout to
take on MS and make some headway.  Save your PR for the EC, because I strongly suspect you're
going to need all you can get.  And it's pretty ineffective on people who have been watching
you so closely all these years and know better.

As an advocate and implementor of Unix in small business, you guys have been stepping on my
toes, unfairly, for coming up on 20 years.  And I'm keeping plenty of popcorn handy for the
duration of this part of the show.

i dont know, but things like exchange 2007 OWA being a sh*it in firefox, 
not having support for public folders, not having rich text support, when 
supporting the public folder is just a matter of putting there the damn 
link, rich text support is just a matter of dropping TinyMCE (its LGPL, so 
not any problem using it) or using correct html and javascript instead of 
activex... OR adding support for odt in office (and sharepoint) and drop 
ooxml (or at least use BOTH)... or let activeX die and promote the use of 
correct html and javascript... or adding working support in outlook and 
exchange for other protocols other than MAPI (like webdav, caldav)... or 
add native support for other filesystems (HFS+, ext3) and protocols (ssh, 
nfs)... or  (etc, etc, etc)

only when MS stops putting stupid limitations in it own software and start 
to use standard protocols (without extending it), we people will give you 
some slack

dont get me wrong, your work is important, but for each thing you manage 
to improve, other parts of MS manage to break or limit 3 or 4 other 
things. Apple have done a system that mostly plays well with others, MS 
keep trying to play alone and only listen to other kids with big guys 
(gov's, big companies) force then to.

Competition is good, if your software is good, there is no need to make 
business by enforcing a monopoly and using grey methods!!

so again, you guys are doing a good thing, please dont stop, saddly there 
is still ALOT to be done