451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
Who’s Talking for Microsoft?
Raven Zachary, May 19, 2006 @ 9:49 am ETIngrid Marson at ZDNet UK has an article at News.com about an upcoming BBC documentary on the topic of open source called “The Code Breakers“.
A senior Microsoft executive* told a BBC documentary that people should use commercial software if they’re looking for stability.
Aren’t we past this rhetoric?! It simply doesn’t hold up. There are plenty of things to criticize about open source – stability isn’t one of them, unless you are downloading nightly builds or dealing with pre-1.0 releases.
Microsoft is claiming the high ground on stability?! Years and years of observing stability issues with Microsoft software makes this one a classic. There are several things I like about Microsoft and its software, but stability is not towards the top of my list.
Microsoft, you can do better than this. I’m sure that Bill Hilf would have something more compelling to say about Microsoft’s positioning relative to open source.
* The senior Microsoft executive is Jonathan Murray, vice president and chief technology officer for Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Ok, this is not the guy tasked with Microsoft’s open source strategy (or anti-strategy), but seeing that this was a BBC documentary, I can see why they sought out the local guy for an interview.
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