ANOTHER LUDICROUS marketing memorandum has been leaked from the sieve that is apparently Redmond, just recently. Eric Raymond's printed it, albeit with his unnecessary commentary interspersed in the text.
It's actually a fairly typical internal marketing document. You recall, marketeers aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer -- they need lots of explicit direction, if only to keep their tiny noses well browned up.
However, the main points of this latest Volish Halloween at Thanksgiving document seem to be:
* Notice Open Source announcements and get it right: study or adopt.
* Escalate the important stuff so Vole Central can apply the brains.
* How to Escalate: send it to the OSSI list (more about this, anon).
* Commitment from Corporate: we'll help, if not right away... later.
Tactics alluded to include: astroturf campaigns, attacking journalists, and suborning regional political interests for Microsoft's purposes.
What's clear is that Microsoft is now scared sh*tless about Open Source adoption by governments and large corporations, even regional department initiatives. They're mobilizing the troops of green marketeers to it.
Not that they'll stand much chance against legions of experienced system managers who they've just ticked off, auditing for licensing, going over their heads to bad-mouth them for considering anything but that one true Microsoft religion -- overall, being more trouble than they're worth.
But the Great Vole never competes fairly, if they can help it. Instead, they destroy: buy up, co-opt, otherwise shut down their competition.
Yet... Linux and Open Source present them with no single target, so they can't use their normal underhanded, even illegal tactics to fight these. Faced with some real competition it can't quash, the Vole's now becoming hysterical. That is what this latest Halloween document is revealing.
Microsoft must have missed the '70s, but most of their customers' system managers didn't. What goes around, comes around, even to Microsoft.
I don't know exactly why, but this quote seems somehow appropriate here: "Windows: A thirty-two bit extension and graphical shell to a sixteen-bit patch to an eight-bit operating system originally coded for a four-bit microprocessor which was written by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition."
Source: <a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7032
" target="_default">The Inquirer</a>
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