[Linux-aus] [Osia-discuss] Re: If you could ask Microsoft a question, what would it be?

[Sridhar Dhanapalan]

On Sun, 13 Jan 2008, Jiri Baum <jiri at baum.com.au> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Brent Wallis:
> > The big 2 questions I have in my head is "why" this MS visit, and,
> > what the SLUG and MS want to get out of it.
>
> "A Microsoft partner is a victim they haven't got to yet."
>
> For MS, it's clearly advantageous to appear to have reformed its ways and
> to appear to be cooperating with the community. They will gain cooperation
> in return, goodwill and so on. In addition, in our case, they're likely to
> gain some measure of discord among us, which is again to their benefit.
>
> Why SLUG is falling for it, I'm not sure; most likely, it's built on a
> culture of cooperation and openness and simply doesn't have the necessary
> defences. It would hardly be alone in that - even organisations such as ISO
> have trouble in such circumstances (and that's just a current, on-going
> example).

You're reading far too much into this. This is a one-off meeting. It is not 
another MS-Novell deal, and we sure as heck aren't making a human pretzel.

At the very least, this is an opportunity to have them visit our turf, on our 
own terms, and force them to respond to everything we throw at them. Lab rats 
spring to mind :)

> A leopard can't change its spots.

Think: IBM. Once the Big Bad Wolf of the IT industry, and champion of 
proprietary technologies and closed thinking, they have dramatically altered 
their image within a short period of time. Who would've thunk it?

If we close ourselves off to these possibilities, we will not only be 
forsaking our principles, we will also be doing ourselves a major disservice.



-- 
		"Windows is not done until Lotus 123 won't run."
			- Old Microsoft internal slogan
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