Re: [Fsuk-manchester] [Fwd: [GeekUp] Microsoft Vice President visiting Manchester this Month]

[Robert Burrell Donkin]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 4:10 PM, Tim Dobson <address@hidden> wrote:
> Lucy wrote:
>>
>> Ah, I've not really been paying them any attention, so I'm not too
>> familiar with all the politics. I see the company as mostly irrelevant
>> and would rather concentrate on Canonical, RedHat etc. Obviously,
>> Microsoft are still the dominant software company but I don't think
>> they'll ever pay more than lip-service to FOSS and so I don't want to
>> pay more than lip-service to them.

m$ have been quite serious for a while and may be starting to get very
serious about FOSS (just like every other major these days)

>>> interesting times :-)
>>
>> Indeed..
>
> One of the most interesting current debates surrounds C# and the ASP.net
> with regards to patent claims over mono etc. and what difficulties this
> could cause the free software community.

the patent question is a broad and deep one, much wider than just mono

> Whilst I don't have a clear opinion on this issue, this guy is being tabled
> as the guy who knows all you ever wanted to know about ASP.net (read took
> the credit for appointing the guy who wrote it or something) so it would be
> fascinating and possibly quite amusing to throw some questions in that
> direction.

m$ appears to be in the middle of setting up the legal and
organisational infrastructure required for code contributions at a
serious scale. there will probably be questions about patents here as
well.

be interesting to know whether it's still just the FOSS division
plugging away internally, or whether it's higher level strategy now.
maybe Mr.Net may give some clues away...

> Also do remember that whilst a question is unlikely to influence the
> decision of top dog at any company, it might help influence the decisions of
> IT managers looking at C# vs Python etc. who might be present.

+1

> Whilst people may see Microsoft as a dominant non-free software megacorp
>  who is on its way out of dominance, underplaying it's significance and
> market share in more than just the operating system market, would be
> foolish.

+1

a key question to think about is: what would the world be like if m$
became the dominant FOSS software megacorp as well

> The only difference between Apple and Adobe execs and Microsoft execs is
> that Apple and Adobe execs seem less willing to leave their bunkers...

+1

- robert