--- title: "[OT]Productivity and lesson learning, Linux style?" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/16/otproductivity-and-lesson-learning-linux-style.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/16/otproductivity-and-lesson-learning-linux-style.html" published: "2004-11-16T08:19:00" updated: "2004-11-16T08:19:00" tags: ["Off Topic"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "[Warning: the following link is to an article that is _anti-Microsoft_ you've been warned ] This article is a very interesting read . On one hand I feel bad for the dude that fell into the teeth of BSA, and I feel kinda…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # \[OT\]Productivity and lesson learning, Linux style? By Roy Osherove November 16, 2004 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) **Historical article** · Originally published November 16, 2004; technical details may be outdated. _\[Warning: the following link is to an article that is \_anti-Microsoft\_  you've been warned__\]_ [This article is a very interesting read](http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html?tag=lh). On one hand I feel bad for the dude that fell into the teeth of BSA, and I feel kinda happy that in return MS got the opposite of what they wanted - less profit and bad publicity. Why is that? because (and this is only based on what I've read there is only so much I know about this so I might be wrong) it looks like they did that man an injustice and it was unfair. Hey, I love MS products but if I was in his position I don't know what I would do. _"**Has Microsoft tried to win you back?** Microsoft is a growing business with $49 billion in the bank. What do they care about me? If they cared about me, they wouldn't have approached me the way they did in the first place...And I'm glad they didn't try to get me back. I thank them for opening my eyes, because I'm definitely money ahead now and I'm definitely just as productive, and I don't have any problems communicating with my customers. So thank you, Microsoft"_ Hell, I bet there's **some** lesson to be learned from all this. All that said, some of the things that man said on the interview make me wonder if I'd ever want to work for him myself: _"...The other thing is that if you look at productivity. If you put a bunch of stuff on people's desktops they don't need to do their job, chances are they're going to use it. I don't have that problem. If all you need is word processing, that's all you're going to have on your desktop, a word processor. It's not going to have Paint or PowerPoint. I tell you what, our hits to eBay went down greatly when not everybody had a Web browser. For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and exporting, why do they need a Web browser? The idea that if you have 2,000 terminals they all have to have a Web browser, that's crazy. It just creates distractions. "_ ## More in Off Topic [All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) - Nov 24, 2004 ### [Not Invented here](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/24/not-invented-here.html) - Nov 20, 2004 ### [Live .Net Rocks chat](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/20/live-net-rocks-chat.html) - Nov 10, 2004 ### [Why does the BorCon Israel Registration page have to suck?](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/10/why-does-the-borcon-israel-registration-page-have-to-suck.html) - Nov 7, 2004 ### [Perspective](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/7/perspective.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/