Josh Ledgard from MS talks about the impressions of a 'softie in a linux show. Some very interesting comments, and at least one surprising anacdote..

Some of the more intersting parts::

“Listening (and Responding) to Customers

Everyone beat MS up on this one.  Simon Phipps, the Chief Technology Evangelist at Sun, made the point best when he said " I used to work as a tester at Microsoft on Word 1.0.  I would log bugs that I'm not even sure the developers ever looked at. I never saw any fixed or heard about the bugs again. The first time I logged a bug against OpenOffice.org one of the developers wrote me back, told me he had fixed it, and I would see it in a released version in 3 months".  He challenged Microsoft to do the same thing and the audience cheered. It reminded me that Microsoft cannot continue to be a black hole in the eyes of the customer. “

“Worst Ploy to take advantage of: Real networks threw an after hours party with free drinks to convince people to build their next generation software for them.  “Sure, I’ll write free code for you in return for peanuts and beer”.  (With the unemployment in the valley they might have had a few takers who considered it a good offer.)

Line most likely heard after people read my badge: Oh, well at least you don’t work for SCO. “