Microsoft Looks for Open Source Desktop Strategy Czar

by Sam Dean - Feb. 06, 2009Comments (6)

Are you interested in taking the job of Director of Open Source Desktop Strategy at Microsoft? If so, here's the LinkedIn job description. Matt Aslett at The 451 Group notes that Microsoft is looking for "a strong team member to lead Microsoft’s global desktop competitive strategy as it relates to open source competitors.” The language used in the job description stays vague about whether the successful candidate's job will be to stave off open source competitors or grow an open source strategy internally, but this is yet another sign that Microsoft has open source directly on its radar.

According to Microsoft's job description:

"As the Director of Open Source Desktop Strategy you will need to drive research and build holistic strategies across dynamic market segments like PCs, NetBooks, and mobile internet devices. You will be responsible for bringing our business strategy to life by discovering and sharing the market insights that set the foundation for our platform value dialogue with customers and the industry."

There's that term netbooks again. As we noted recently, Microsoft blamed its recent financial shortfall and subsequent layoffs of 5,000 employess partly on the success of netbooks. This appeared in the company's 10-Q filing:

"The decline in OEM revenue reflects an 11 percentage point decrease in the OEM premium mix to 64%, primarily driven by growth of licenses related to sales of netbook PCs."

Many of those netbooks that are selling are Linux-based, and many of the ones that are Windows-based emphasize open source software applications, so it's no stretch to assume that Microsoft may be adjusting its attitudes toward open source. As we've noted, Internet Explorer is losing significant market share to open source browsers, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has alluded to possibly building a browser strategy around an open source rendering engine such as WebKit.

  It makes complete sense for Microsoft to leverage open source rather than shunning it. Hopefully that will be the stance that the new Director of Open Source Desktop Strategy takes.


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6 Comments
 

sheeeeesh! one person can do all that...would have thought it better to trust that sort of strategizing to a couple of insightful people.


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"sharing the market insights that set the foundation for our platform value dialogue with customers and the industry" sounds like war to open source to me.


Sounds like lazy marketing-type drivel to me. "Platform value dialogue" is the new "performance-mediated dashboard."


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"sharing the market insights that set the foundation for our platform value dialogue with customers and the industry" sounds like war to open source to me.


Sounds like lazy marketing-type drivel to me. "Platform value dialogue" is the new "performance-mediated dashboard."


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Embrace and Extend has always been ingrained into the DNA of M$. The problem here is that M$ will begin to participate in more projects, and figure out ways to tie those projects to their platform. I bet they will pick different people to partner with (e.g. Novell) and then divide the landscape by creating FUD, and supporting those projects that work well with their platform.


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Here's some strategy for Microsoft:

1) Pick which MS products to support (Windows and Office, to begin with). These are the cash cows. Protect them.

2) Pick the most formidable competitors to these products

- Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL

- OpenOffice, Google Docs, Zoho

3) Create case studies and partnerships to show 'support'

- Novell, Apache

4) Hire Czar

5) Build extensions, packaged support and 'premium versions' that show people that when they want the 'real deal', they need to come home to daddy (Microsoft)

6) Have crappy support for FOSS

7) Pump crappy info into the support channels for the projects, and quality support on the MS channels

8) Build management of these supported products into MS ecosystem, including Visual Studio and Windows Management consoles.

9) Keep several projects viable by throwing crumbs their way to keep Feds off their back

10) Build case study and repeat for other software segments.


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This is baloni. I bet M$ is just pulling everyone's leg, by offering a job that tries to FLAME open source once again, and rake in dough at the same time.


From a company that disses Linux, this WILL NOT FLY.


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