Wolf at the door
I saw an interesting billboard on the southbound side of Route 495 in Tewksbury, MA. The bold, black letters read, "Bipartisan Computing." The names Microsoft and Novell appear in smaller letters underneath. This apparently is part of a campaign to support the November 2 announcement between the two companies; a deal that Microsoft claimed is evidence of the "historic bridging of the divide between the open source community and proprietary software."
Among other things, the Nov. 2 press release claimed the two sides would work to improve interoperability between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office. For a revealing look at why this is so amusing, read Carol Sliwa's outstanding December 4 article in Computerworld. Thanks to the Massachusetts Public Records Law, Computerworld was able to examine over 300 e-mails and documents between the Commonwealth and Redmond. It's hard to read this piece and come away with the feeling that Microsoft really had/has any interest in bridging divides. Or perhaps they do, as long as they get to be the toll collector.
Then, on November 16, the bridge got a little shakier when Steve Ballmer told a group in Seattle that the real motivation for the agreement was that Linux uses MSFT intellectual property and that MSFT shareholders deserve a return for its innovation. The bridge keeper reportedly added, "We believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance sheet liability." Sigh, it doesn't appear Mr. Ballmer really gets the collaboration thing.
From a PR perspective, it'll be interesting to see if the mighty Microsoft PR machine can pull off this sleight of hand - getting the world to believe that the most proprietary company on the planet really believes that "computer users are best served by software products that work smoothly together, whatever their source." My guess is that most people will have the same reaction as they did to George Bush's infamous "Mission accomplished" proclamation and Bill Clinton's gem, "I did not have sex with that woman" - Yeah, right!
Posted by John Moran on December 15, 2006 at 11:52 AM
