A Thousand Tornadoes Deep.
My friends Marc Canter (independent) and Kim Cameron (Microsoft) are exchanging blogs about the benefits and dangers of doing business with Microsoft.
Marc contends that people don't want to get locked into standards owned by Microsoft or Sun.
Kim wants to look beyond the past and create a “big bang” of
distributed computing that would eclipse the petty Microsoft bashing.
In Marc's defense, Microsoft is an unabashed bully. The leaders of
Microsoft–Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer–lead the bully behaviour. I
have personal experience of this behaviour from both of them. Microsoft
doesn't and isn't going to play fair anytime in the future–in general.
I say “in general” for a reason. There are good people with vision
and integrity at Microsoft. Kim Cameron is one of those people. You
can't go wrong working with Kim. Further, it is just ludicrous to think
that Microsoft is of one voice and has an overarching plan with which
to rule everything always and forever.
As I have said to Kim before, working at Microsoft is like working
inside 10 tornadoes. I am changing that to a thousand tornadoes. Each
tornado (or hailstorm if you like) has its own path, thinking and
objective. They seldom cross paths and are too busy dealing with the
issues at hand to even talk to each other.
Microsoft is a thousand tornadoes deep.
Microsoft bashing aside, when two people like Marc and Kim get
together and collaborate, expect good things to happen that go beyond
the history of giants–even the giant of all time–Microsoft.
I look forward to see what they can do. [Craig Burton: logs, links, life, and lexicon]