On Sat, Oct 11, 2003 at 07:54:43PM -0400, Roberto Sanchez wrote: > Tom wrote: > > >You know, this is the first slipup in the Matrix I've experienced > >since I switch to Linux. (I hope you get that: 9 months ago I was > >a MS-employee. I mean to say: taboo subject about which we are > >embaressed so we'll pretend it isn't worth discussing... > >Less than complete intellectual forthrightness... Patent issue > >we cannot overcome...) > > > >Not that it's a big deal, just find the arbitriness curious... > >Everything else is rational. > > > > > > Wow. You worked for the evil empire? And survived? I always > thought it was like the mafia. Once you're in, you can never > leave. :-) > > -Roberto
That's my cue to tell stories: Internally, MS employees act like open source. There's a great big share (\\products\public), and everybody installs Advanced Server/Enterprise editions of *EVERYTHING* (Windows, SQL, VStudio, Office, etc) on EVERY machine. Prolly $20,000 worth of software on every machine. If you have THAT model, and it's free, it's pretty groovy. But the ironic thing is, even with all that free software, I'm still happier in the Linux world! I worked there two years, June 2000 - Jan 2003. I saw NGWS become .NET and Whistler become XP and Server 2003. And I saw developers noble intentions become the usual Microsoft incompatible crap. You know the theory that no one is consciously evil? It is very true here: at no point, did anyone ever explicitly say "let's make sure this lines our pocket and f*cks everybody else up" (except once or twice, from high-level suits). They start out really honestly thinking they're doing pure computer science. And then, 10,000 things happen, MS does stuff, vendors respond, the community interprets it, mostly MS does stuff: and the end result is: what you see. The expression "evil intent" is not accurate, yet that is the result! It's all very complicated.... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
