On Sun, 13 Jan 2008, Jeff Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sridhar, > > There's really only one benchmark that matters here, and it applies to all > speakers at SLUG anyway: "Will your be presentation be about Open Source?", > and I know the committee would rationally apply this benchmark regardless > of who the presenter might be. > > If they're prepared to come in good faith to talk about Open Source (and > yes naysayers, they do have quite a bit to talk about!), then rock on. Pity > that Sam won't be there -- hopefully someone else from their Open Source > team can be, as opposed to the local non-tech randoms and product > evangelists usually doing this kind of stuff.
We have explained our position very clearly, and have been assured that they are coming to talk about open source and interoperability (which by its nature will bleed a bit into their own products). We have stipulated that this must be a Q&A session led by our community, and they have agreed. We might give them a short period at the beginning to set the tone, but we are not interested in product demonstrations or monologues. We want to pose to them the hard questions, and see how they respond. Microsoft need to justify the resources they are putting into this. If all they do is anger us, what's the point? I don't think they're stupid, but they certainly have a different perspective on things. Whether they can effectively communicate their viewpoint to us is another matter, and the onus is completely on them to do so. At the end of the day, I see this as a case of "know your enemy". Or, put differently, "keep your friends close... and your enemies closer". If nothing comes of this in the longer term, who really cares? At the very least we had a chance to grill them. It's fun sport :) -- "Openness to me means that anything can be cloned... no patents... no IP that stands in the way of somebody creating something that's compatible but better. And the beauty of that is that it forces you to keep prices extremely low and listen to the customer feedback about how you can do better" - Bill Gates, 1996
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