Microsoft and 'An Open and Honest Discussion'? 65
Simon Brooke asks: "I have today received from Microsoft a flyer about an event entitled 'Microsoft and Open Source 20/20 Seminar: An open and honest technology discussion'. Microsoft are touting one of their speakers as an 'independent analyst'. All the other speakers are either Microsoft employees or represent businesses related to Microsoft. The 'independent' speaker is Philip Dawson of Meta Group, and his job title is given as 'Senior Program Director, International Infrastructure Strategies'. He's described as 'a leading authority on Linux, high end UNIX, Windows server platforms and storage'. Among the 'seminar benefits' is listed 'question the platform and Linux technical experts' so clearly their pitch will be to present this guy is a 'Linux technical expert'. Anyone prepared to help me out here? Have Microsoft held similar events in your part of the world, and if so how did you respond? Do you have any scoop on Mr Dawson?" Sounds like more par for the course from Microsoft. Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to go into these things armed with more information...that is if you are in to events like these.
"The event (which is free) is being held on:
- 10th June - London
- 17th June - Edinburgh
- 29th June - Manchester
- 7th July - Newport
Consequently it would help enormously if people going to the event had some low-down on this guy. He's apparently written a recent report entitled 'Linux Adoption: An OS for the Masses?' but unfortunately it seems you have to pay chunky amounts of money to get access to it. It would be extremely interesting if someone had read it, particularly if it contained factual errors or obvious misinformation. It would also be interesting to know in what ways he has worked with or for Microsoft in the past."
He's ex-SCO (Score:5, Informative)
Mr. Dawson has a biog page [metagroup.com] on which it notes that he's ex-SCO.
Re:He's ex-SCO (Score:2)
Re:He's ex-SCO (Score:4, Interesting)
Clarification: being ex-SCO could count either way, I'm not throwing stones; I'm just discussing the geology.
Re:He's ex-SCO (Score:2)
My memory may be failing me, but aren't (1) the IBM/Sequent relationship and (2) NUMA both issues of contention i
Re:He's ex-SCO (Score:5, Interesting)
Forgive me if I read too much into your words, but the blind hatred of SCO on /. means that everyone else is going to read you the same way.
Re:He's ex-SCO (Score:1)
Absolutely not, for all the reasons you mention - hence my almost immediate clarification [slashdot.org] (7 mins after the original post).
Re:He's ex-SCO (Score:1)
Re:He's ex-SCO (Score:4, Informative)
Then there's Caldera Systems. They purchased much of the assets of Old SCO (who then changed their name to Tarentella) and then renamed themselves to The SCO Group. These are the people who are currently involved in all the litigation etc against IBM, Novell, Redhat, Daimler Chryster and Autozone.
Re:He's ex-SCO (Score:2)
I'll cut him slack since he worked at SCO. I can't cut anyone slack who currently works at SCO. Have a spine and do the right thing, people!
Re:He's ex-SCO (Score:2)
Yes, it is. I've done it.
an agnostic/moderate for balance? (Score:2)
Obviously MS isn't going to hire someone sincerely hostile to their wares for this "open discussion". But that doesn't mean everyone there is necessarily an MS partisan. So, kind of like one of those polit
Re:an agnostic/moderate for balance? (Score:2)
The really god ones that actually make you think your watching some news program, then let you down when you belive everything being said and then find out it is on 5 more time that week. If it was an open and honest debate then there prolly would be some people there that we didn't need to look in thier bio to find out who they were.
Digging the dirt... and dirtying yourself. (Score:2)
I'm not surprised at the presence of such an obviously prejudicial statement on slashdot. But it's concerning when the prejudice starts in the introductory write-up... but then, maybe I'm reading into things.
It could've been written like so:
It would be extremely interesting if some
puhleeze (Score:1)
Re:puhleeze (Score:2)
You should see the note on my info page... I wrote it when I first joined.
Re:puhleeze (Score:2)
Re:Digging the dirt... and dirtying yourself. (Score:4, Funny)
Meta rank themselves among the FUDmeisters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Digging the dirt... and dirtying yourself. (Score:1)
Re:Digging the dirt... and dirtying yourself. (Score:2)
1000 statements that are true and correct don't carry the weight of one statement that shows someone lied.
So if you in fact suspect that someone may be prejudiced on a point then it's only prudent to search for evidence of that. No amount of evidence saying he's fair and reasonable can trump one solid example not being so.
Relax (Score:5, Insightful)
I once had a MS guy wheeled in to tell me that J2EE was fundamentally broken and that he'd spent 2 years at Barclays bank (it's a UK high-street bank) trying to get it to work and it just wouldn't. This went on for 30 mins or so. Then I invited him to come around the corner (literally) and see the J2EE-based demo my team had put together in the previous 2 days...
I suppose the point is that all companies are basically all about winning contracts and never mind the truth. It sounds stupid to be pointing that out as I'm sure 99% of you deal with that in your daily working life. Yes, MS as a corporation is particularly ruthless but let's not get carried away. They are just the ultimate embodiment of what most corporations would like to be. Don't kid yourself that Apple, Oracle or whoever wouldn't be as evil if they could only figure out how. Well, IMO. If I'm wrong then great. Seriously.
Re:Relax (Score:2)
Re:Relax (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not clear that open source is winning. Small battles here and there surely but the war is far from over.
Even if it were, the OS community should never "relax." This is business, and business is tough. Let your guard down at the wrong time and it's game over.
"Relax, this won't hurt a bit" (Score:2)
Agree. As long as Bill has an unfair advantage, he'll be out there pumping it for all it's worth. You'll probably have to drive a stake through his heart to stop him from being greedy and obsessively competitive. He's one bloke I would like to see the JW's get through to.
Re:Relax (Score:2)
I think that your statement about business actually addresses one of, IMHO, is OSS's weakest point: companies like Microsoft, Oracle, etc are fighting a *business* war. Much of OSS is still stuck fighting an ideological one.
Re:Relax (Score:1)
Re:Relax (Score:4, Insightful)
I've deployed FreeBSD at client sites, I've deployed Linux at client sites, and I've deployed MS stuff at client sites. You know what the kicker is? You gotta pick the solution for the problem. I've lost count of the times I've thrown in a quick FreeBSD, PHP, MySQL solution to solve a problem, and I've done the same with Linux....
The problem is, you rabid *nix d00dz want OSS installed for everything. I'm sorry....point me at the OSS equivalent of Sharepoint [microsoft.com] and I'll start deploying that. But until there exists an OSS equivalent of genuinely innovative stuff like this, then Sharepoint is the solution.
You can bitch and moan about MS insecurity, but at the end of the day, if you know your job as a network\system engineer, those problems go away.
As far as open viewpoints go, yep....some of those MS solutions address problems that the zealots [adequacy.org] haven't even thought of...even MS is allowed to tell us about them
Re:Relax (Score:5, Insightful)
Plone [plone.org]. Now start deploying that.
But seriously, I had a very high-level IT manager complain that she wanted to replace a home-grown collaboration-site-creation web application with the more polished and integrated SharePoint, but that the costs were enormous. (If you really have installed it for clients, you have already gone through this exercise. For my Fortune 250 company, this is going to range into about a half a million dollars, not counting the hardware and other infrastructure.) Unfortunately, Plone only does a little more than what our home-grown app does, but I throw this out there so that other people can benefit from the technology that 1) don't have a ton of money for it and 2) don't have a talented web development group. Plone does most of what SharePoint does. It only lacks the usual Microsoft lockin..., er, integration.
Re:Relax (Score:2)
Wishful thinking ...
Re:Relax (Score:3, Interesting)
IF the customers are intested in maximum MS Office integration and a filing cabinet-like repository, Sharepoint is great.
IF the customers want to use it as a colaboration tool, or manage non-Microsoft Office formatted data, it's not.
Re:Relax (Score:2)
Damn straight. I've had it up to here with Darl and SCO users pushing for OSS for everything.
Re:Relax (Score:2)
Re:who cares? (Score:1)
Re:who cares? (Score:2)
only has a BA (Score:1)
Re:only has a BA (Score:2, Informative)
This is a UK Degree: a Bachelor of Art. What you may read between the lines is very limited.
It's common for UK Uni's to share modules between degree courses. The obvious parallel is a BSc (Bachelor of Science) and because this BA is in a scientific subject it's a possibility that this is the case.
I sit next to someone with a BA in CS who's on his first year of a Distributed Computing PhD, he also helped me through my first stage 1 Gentoo [gentoo.org] build and is a more than competent coder, so like I say, there's
Re:only has a BA (Score:2)
Re:only has a BA (Score:2, Interesting)
Again don't confuse education and intelligence. But again, neither education nor intelligence is pr
Re:only has a BA (Score:2)
Re:only has a BA (Score:2)
Or a BS (Score:2)
Re:only has a BA (Score:1)
Re:only has a BA (Score:2)
Unless your point is that any four-year degree is "bu
Re:only has a BA (Score:1)
I'd disagree. In the UK a BA is an arts degree equivelent to the BSc (both are bachelors degrees).
However Hull Poly is not, how shall we put in, in an Ivy League, more of 2nd tier uni.
I am not slagging off Hull Poly, but it doesn't rate with Oxford, Cambridge, UNIMIST, Durham, Imperial etc..
Jaj
Interesting Tactic: Pay Per View FUD: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you pay for it it must be true. Mega Corporations paid to create^H^H^H^H^H^H find this truth for you.
If your opponents generally can't afford to view your FUD before you present it with a paid shill arguing your opponents view point then your truth shall reign uncontestible...
Well that's just my take on the matter. But then again I thought the Maginot Line was a good idea (tactically speaking).
google? (Score:2, Interesting)
The /. Lynch Mob. (Score:1)
How do you know he's a witch?
He looks like one
Sheesh.
Re:The /. Lynch Mob. (Score:2)
Beisdes it's fun playing with the minds of the Fascists.
Uhhh (Score:3, Funny)
Open and honest?
I believe I speak for all of us here when I say: "When pigs fly."
Anyone who goes to a Microsoft seminar... (Score:2)
The only thing worth doing is to try to understand the internal politics that must be going on in your organization if they intend to send anyone to such a seminar.
Whoa. (Score:2)
Re:Whoa. (Score:1)
Let someone affiliated with Open Source chose their champion, then the "open and honest" becomes a bit more believable. As it is, it is propaganda.
Not to take away from your good point about the inequality in the numbers....
Information search reveals (Score:2)
The only bright spot for UNIX is the fact that Oracle scales better on UNIX than on Windows.
In anot
Re:Information search reveals (Score:2)