Microsoft Research do some really interesting, innovative and even completely open stuff. If we're looking for opportunities to collaborate (= help Microsoft to engage with, contribute to and build our community) then I would think it would be good to: i) Understand what are some key MS research activities of interest to the SLUG/LUV communities ii) Understand some key problems in the SLUG/LUV communities that MS research or MS in general may be able to help solve iii) Understand what grants, cooperative research and cooperative development priorities MS may have right now.
Microsoft is a huge cash cow (in the OS and Office sections, at least). We should be actively working with them to help them spend their money on things that are important to both of us. Let's not use this opportunity to dig up all the things MS have done (or are doing) wrong. Let's use it to find ways to help them do right. They're not going to change their core values (and neither are we), but there is still plenty of room for agreement and collaboration. re, N PS: Some people may be surprised to think that MS would want to work with, contribute to or build our community. But MS already do a lot of this for a lot of different communities. Helping communities is good business. Let's find ways to help Microsoft contribute to our communities. On 13/01/2008, at 12:10 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: > On Sun, 13 Jan 2008, "Brent Wallis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Hi, >> >> On Jan 12, 2008 10:47 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> On Sat, 12 Jan 2008, "Brent Wallis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>> K...so they asked to come along or did someone invite them? >>> >>> They offered, and we treated them with even more scepticism and >>> conditions than we would an offer from anyone else. >>> >>>> 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. >>> >>> Those questions are key. I have added them to the wiki page[1]. >> >> Excellent....but I would like to suggest that it is very important >> that MS state their reasons for attendance _before_ the event. > > They are attending to discuss the MS-Novell deal (it's been about a > year since > it was announced) and their activities regarding interoperability > (including > SMB, OOXML and virtualisation) and open source. > > It'll be mostly a Q&A session, so we can ask them whatever we like > and watch > them squirm ;) > > > -- > "I fully admit that there are some major problems in the Windows OS" > - Eric > Traut, Microsoft engineer, October 2007 > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.linux.org.au/listinfo/linux-aus -- ubuntu-au mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
