Simon Willison’s Weblog

Problems in Nirvana

Simon Phipp is Chief Technology Evangelist at Sun, and recently participated as a speaker on the “.NET Nirvana” Geek Cruise. His blog entries covering the event make interesting reading. To cut a long story short, after a couple of presentations on Java web services and open source coftware the Microsoft contingent at the event requested that he be barred from attending an evening Q & A. Simon makes the following observation:

But the more I think about it, the more it resonates with what I have read in books like ’Hard Drive’ about Microsoft’s ethos being one of ’Win at all costs, and they are all out to get us’. It seems the automatic assumption of some of the other speakers was that I was in some way ’out to get’ Microsoft, that my agenda was attack, so despite that being absent from my intent it was read in as a sub-text to what I said. Considering that the people involved represent the attitudes of the largest, most aggressive company in my industry, immune from almost every attack and even able to shrug off conviction under the Sherman Act like a speeding ticket from a small-town cop, they showed a vulnerablity and insecurity which speaks volumes of the way Microsoft likes its people to feel and act. I stand educated.