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Microsoft Software Linux

Meet Microsoft's Linux Lab Head Bill Hilf 191

Posted by timothy from the eye-on-the-competition dept.
morcego writes "Yahoo News has a very interesting interview with Bill Hilf, Microsoft's director of Microsoft's platform technology strategy group, who in turn works for Martin Taylor, Microsoft's general manager of platform strategy and Linux point man. From the interview: '"I am a non-Microsoft guy working at Microsoft," Hilf said.'"
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Meet Microsoft's Linux Lab Head Bill Hilf More

Meet Microsoft's Linux Lab Head Bill Hilf

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  • Nothing to see? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What's up with the 'nothing to see' errors? I have been getting plenty of them lately.

    • Re:Nothing to see? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Once upon a time there was a website called "Slashdot". One of the greatest pastimes was the fight for "first post". The competition was made far more fierce and simpler for the common slashbot because of the notification that the next story is available in the mysterious future for Slashdot subscribers.
      In the olden days, not everyone hit refresh on Slashdot's front page. Instead they wrote up scripts to catch the posting of a new story on the main page and it would follow the strict guidelines of posting a

  • Good to know (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hoka ( 880785 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:05PM (#12470186)
    It's nice to know that at least somebody there has some understanding of open source/Linux/alternatives. From most the FUD we keep seeing lately it makes me wonder if Microsoft would ever get a clue. Of course, this could just be some master plot by Bill to get us all thinking he is being understanding, before he ships us off to the Galapacos Islands and destroys us all with a ray gun.

    • TFA sucks. big-time. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Hilf said he still hears the same-old, predictable questions and perceptions regarding Microsoft's open-source strategy and intentions. His top five:

      # When will Microsoft open source X (Microsoft commercial product)?
      # Why don't you build X (Microsoft commercial product) so it runs on Linux?
      # Microsoft is all-about closed source.
      # Microsoft is anti-open source.
      # Microsoft is always less secure than every open-source product on every front."

      what the hell is this shit?

      wow, that's a great article. let's ha
      • actually, he probably intentionally avoided another, better question : when will microsoft _really_ start doing something to increase interoperability instead of trying to make it as hard as possible for everybody else ?

        stop using some half-assed closed crap (active-x), add support for opendocument, document native msoffic formats, smb etc - but that would make you compete on real benefits, not lock-in. oh no, we can't afford that.
    • " ships us off to the Galapacos Islands"

      I assume you mean: ship us off to the Gulag [google.ca], a Stalinist prison camp for dissidents. The Galapagos [galapagos.org] islands were made famous by Darwin and are a hotbed of evolutionary development. Sending us off to the Galapagos would hasten our evolution.

      • I assume you mean: ship us off to the Gulag

        surely this is true, but in order to facilitate the

        destroy[ing] us all with a ray gun.

        he'll want to ship

        us off to the Galapacos[sic] Islands

        to increase the odds of running across the required sharks with laser beams
    • If Microsoft spent as much resources studing Windows scalability (on the scale of Google) and security (doen't even need examples), as they do analyzing Linux for their Get the Fud campaign, perhaps Longhorn will actually be a stable, secure, and scalable platform.

      Of course, perhaps they *are* doing so, and Longhorn will be so good they won't need to try to reverse engineer Linux anymore, and this Lab can switch over to start looking into MacOS.

      • Wait... wait... wait...

        they won't need to try to reverse engineer Linux anymore, and this Lab can switch over to start looking into MacOS

        Since when...
        1) Do you have to reverse-engineer something that is already open-source? and
        2) Since when has Microsoft not been "studying" the new featurews of each new Apple/MacOS product release?

    • Re:Good to know (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dougmc ( 70836 ) <dougmc+slashdot@frenzied.us> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:48PM (#12470472) Homepage
      It's nice to know that at least somebody there has some understanding of open source/Linux/alternatives.
      Microsoft is a large company. I'll bet there's hundreds of employees there that have a good understanding of open source alternatives. There's probably even some employees who regularly contribute to some open source projects, unless Microsoft policy actively prohibits it.

      The marketing stuff that you see from them is written by a small subset of the company, and it's generally written with one goal in mind -- to benefit Microsoft. They aren't worried about giving the alternatives a fair treatment, unless they think that that will benefit them somehow.

      Overall, Microsoft may be the `enemy', but the individual employees certainly aren't. They're just average working people like those working at any other software company.

      • Re:Good to know (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dioscaido ( 541037 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @06:03PM (#12471036)
        I'm a dev on Longhorn, and believe it or not, at least for our project, we have a lab running linux and OSX machines, as well as tons of other networked appliances, to make sure our new stuff communicates with succesfully with their stuff. Plenty of us run linux servers at home.
      • If you work for a company that does things you think are wrong, you have made a moral compromise. Depending on how much your own work competes with the company's actions you reject, or how wrong you think those actions are, you could be a hypocrite. When you're working for a monopoly abuser campaigning daily (and often successfully) against open source and Linux, you have to keep that in mind, if you care about your integrity.

  • Bill, you are not alone (Score:3, Funny)

    by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 ( 812236 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:07PM (#12470192) Journal
    I am a non-Microsoft guy working at Microsoft.

    Funny, that statement could also apply to Laura DiDio.
  • tell me when a MS guy works for, say, RedHat.. (if it happens)

    • Re:yawn.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by craXORjack ( 726120 )
      Maybe it's already happened. Bill has spies everywhere. :-)
    • My office has gnu/linux and windows.....

      We use Fedora Core for work, games, everything computer based. We use windows for looking out.

  • Useless article! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dbretton ( 242493 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:10PM (#12470218) Homepage
    I just RTFA, and there is no content at all.

    Let me summarize for you:
    Bill Hilf works for Microsoft, reporting on the progress and direction of the open source projects and the OSS community in general.

    There, now you can go do something more important than read this article.
    • Damn you, dbretton. I come to Slashdot (amongst other places) so I don't have to do anything important.

    • Re:Useless article! (Score:5, Funny)

      by rharris ( 849104 ) <rickyharris@gmail.com> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:17PM (#12470275)
      Agreed. Had he been a non-microsoft guy working at microsoft with a chainsaw, then we'd have had something. :)

    • Re:Useless article! (Score:4, Informative)

      by badriram ( 699489 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:20PM (#12470292)
      Well if you have time, go on to Channel 9 [msdn.com] and take at look his interview, including the linux lab itself..
    • Quoting dbretton:

      I just RTFA, and there is no content at all.

      Let me summarize for you: Bill Hilf works for Microsoft, reporting on the progress and direction of the open source projects and the OSS community in general.

      I don't believe that the article was written with Slashdot users in mind, but rather for corporations who have vested interest in either (or both) Microsoft and Linux, but are as yet uninformed.

      For them, this article is encouraging because it shows that Microsoft has formal

    • "Linux running at Microsoft? Isn't that sacrilege? Think of it more as a competitive advantage, said Hilf."

      I read this to mean that Microsoft's competitive advantage against other proprietary software vendors like Apple is that Microsoft uses Linux internally.

      Interesting! Makes you wonder exactly how this is their Linux use becomes their competitive advantage, though - is it through "borrowing" features (hope not code, though, because of the GPL) - or is it through running their enterprise systems on L

    • Yeah, it's like a human interest story. I was left at the end of that article feeling unfulfilled. it seemed like it was originally a decent article but too long, so they castrated it

      but the whole article has the feel of that episode of the simpsons where bart keeps doing the human interest stories...

      "Bill Hilf is a non-microsoft guy working at microsoft. Some call him crazy, some call him courageous..." *suddenly Mr Hilf comes running out of his office chucking plush linux penguins at the reporter*

  • More Transparent? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by xAXISx ( 855579 )
    Hilf says he spends a lot of time "making Linux more transparent to Microsoft managers."

    Hmm... I guess this means he's trying to eliminate the competition between linux and windows. Is it just me, or does this seem to not be working?

  • a non-Microsoft guy working at Microsoft

  • Traitor! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jarn_Firebrand ( 845277 ) <eurus103@gmail.cCOUGARom minus cat> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:11PM (#12470226)
    Bill Hilf is a TRAITOR! Lets tar and feather him! Have him drawn and quartered! Send him off the plank! Put him in an iron maiden! <insert any other threat you can think of>

  • new distro (Score:2, Funny)

    by haxhia ( 783279 )
    From article: "In addition to acting Microsoft's good cop on open source, Hilf also runs the Microsoft Linux lab" Is this Microsoft Linux distro open-source? Where do I get it?
    • Well, yes, if Microsoft has an internal Linux distro, and they almost positively do have something similar to a distro, it falls under the GPL, which means if it ever sees the light of day, they have to release the source code or get nailed for it.

  • Espionage Eh (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Aha, he's being very open for a Linux spy in Microsoft.

    Admirable.

  • So why no interoperability (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MountainMan101 ( 714389 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:15PM (#12470258)
    They have a load of *nix servers and PCs, yet frequently new M$ products fail to work with 3rd party clients/interfaces/servers. It sounds like he Microsoft's gimp for building systems that their engineers can write software to NOT work on.
    • Microsoft's gimp
      Uh, you mean MSPAINT.EXE?

    • Re:So why no interoperability (Score:5, Interesting)

      by petrus4 ( 213815 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @05:12PM (#12470640) Homepage Journal
      Because Microsoft's profit model depends on the unique selling point philosophy, i.e. the idea that a customer will only buy from you rather than another company for as long as you've got something which no other company has. The unique selling point philosophy is the main thing in opposition to interoperability...it's the entire reason why companies do not in fact want standards, despite paying lip service to the contrary. It's because they like the idea that if a customer wants feature X in software, and only one company has software with feature X, then said customer will *have* to go to that company, and that company only in order to buy it. Exclusivity/uniqueness of offerings gives companies a lot of control, which they want.
    • They have a load of *nix servers and PCs, yet frequently new M$ products fail to work with 3rd party clients/interfaces/servers. It sounds like he Microsoft's gimp for building systems that their engineers can write software to NOT work on.

      Microsoft's interoperability problems tend to stem not from outright sabotage of protocols, but from just not giving a shit.

  • Hopefully not too off topic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:18PM (#12470283)
    I work at an Apple Store in the Seattle area previously mentioned in a slashdot article. I think its worth noting that a lot of Microsoft people buy non microsoft products. For instance one microsoft employee came in and bought a Mac Mini. Of course there is no PPC Windows Edition so its quite obvious that Microsoft people are acknowledging other products besides their own.
  • Microsoft are not scared of linux. Microsoft are not afraid of loosing out to linux. Microsoft are the innovators.

    Yet they feel the need to get a linux guy to set up a lab to watch linux evolving along with the numerous paid shill/fud articles about the TCO of linux v windows.

    MICROSOFT is SCARED of linux !

    go Linux.

  • Hilf? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gzip Christ ( 683175 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:20PM (#12470290) Homepage
    Hilf? As in "hacker I'd like to fuck"?
  • "I thought I'd have gotten a lot of 'it's crap if it's not built here,' attitude," he said.

    Not to start a flamewar, but I'm told by someone knowledgable [wikipedia.org] that IBM's not-built-here mindset is legendary, and second only to the US government.

  • testing details? (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by moz25 ( 262020 )
    What I'm missing here is if they use e.g. PHP Accelerator for their benchmarking. That's known to speed up PHP scripts a lot. Also, I wonder if interoperability here means backing away from the broken-protocols strategy?
    • What I'm missing here is if they use e.g. PHP Accelerator for their benchmarking. That's known to speed up PHP scripts a lot. Also, I wonder if interoperability here means backing away from the broken-protocols strategy?


      I do not think this is the article that you think it is.
    • What? Who modded that interesting? The article doesn't say anything about PHP or benchmarking.
      • If you read the article, you will find this paragraph about halfway:

        It is in this lab that Microsoft does a lot of its internal benchmarking, comparing Windows Server to Linux; ASP.Net to PHP; and Microsoft Office to OpenOffice. But a lot of the lab's testing involves interoperability, too, Hilf said.
  • They take in a Linux guy (if thats what he really is), to be able to figure out why people are so motivated to work on OSS. He's their labrat.. I assume they still let him work on OSS projects so he remains a Linux guy. A real Linux dude will do his best to setup secure servers against MS servers, instead of jilted servers to prove Linux has a higher TCO.

    They should ideally also keep him around to (1) constantly criticize MS from within (2) keep a testbench of MS-OSS projects they could sell in the future.

  • he added.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonj@NoSPaM.gmail.com> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:26PM (#12470330) Homepage Journal
    "We get to find out lots of interesting things -- like how to authenticate against Active Directory, how to run non-Microsoft mail clients with Exchange," and the like, [Bill Hilf] said.

    "Once we figure a way to for other products to interoperate with Microsoft, my job is to modify our product so the other products won't work," he added. "It's helps a great deal when I get to look at our competitors code, but they can't see ours."

    At this point, he chuckled a bit to himself while twisting his pencil-thin mustache with his fingers.
  • The article mentioned that he was "senior director of engineering for eToys". I don't know about the website, but in terms of core business functions: warehousing, order system... etoys was fundamentally a VMS shop not a Unix shop at all (not a Microsoft shop either, so...). Obviously a guy who was a VMS expert needs to find new work but I did find it interesting since its unclear whether he really is a Linux expert at all. OTOH etoys was a pretty well run place destroyed by the anti-ebusiness backlash o
  • There is an interview with Martin Taylor and Bill Helf in two [msdn.com] parts [msdn.com] on Channel9 [msdn.com].

    Interesting stuff...

  • For those who are interested in the MS Linux Lab (Score:5, Informative)

    by amliebsch ( 724858 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:28PM (#12470348) Journal
    Check out the video on Channel 9. >a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostI D=65355">http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?Po stID=65355 They talk about some stuff, then go inside the lab, where they are testing clustering on a Linux distro and have racks and racks of different distros (and reveal that the copmany favorite is apparently...Gentoo!)
  • *WHY* the hell would you even want to interview someone with a director-level title at a company like Microsoft? You're going to get a 100% content-free interview, as people at that position get there by being as utterly devoid of opinions, content or anything else interesting, except for their Jedi mind-trick: a list of "completed deliverables" that more senior managers can't help but throw money at.

    Why not interview someone more rank and file who actually does the work of pounding out OSS install and m

  • Duality of intent (Score:2, Interesting)

    by canuck57 ( 662392 )

    "We get to find out lots of interesting things -- like how to authenticate against Active Directory, how to run non-Microsoft mail clients with Exchange," and the like, he said.

    This isn't thanks to Microsoft. Microsoft routinely writes their stuff with incompatibilities in mind while stealing the protocols, and likely chunks of open source.

    But fortunately as a percentage of the world Microsoft's dominance is decaying as many new countries are opting out of the blind following of Microsoft. I think TC

  • Microsoft. Where do you want to go today? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:58PM (#12470533)
    So this Hilf Bill (any relationship to Gates Bill?) is paid by Microsoft to troll Slashdot and other F/OSS sites, mailing lists, and blogs? So that's where all the pirst fost, goatse, "moderate" opinions, and pro-Microsoft posts come from!! The greatest mystery of the universe is finally solved!

    Seriously, though, I think it's funny that Microsoft needs to have a position like this. Maybe they'd be better off letting all employees spend 20% of their paid time reading about Linux and the most popular F/OSS programs out there. They might learn a thing or two (probably two) about how to code software that actually works. And then Microsoft wouldn't be throwing their money away.

  • There are a couple of of videos discussing Linux at Microsoft at Channel 9 [msdn.com].

  • How different is Linux from Windows? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Loundry ( 4143 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @05:17PM (#12470695) Journal
    One of the points that Bill Hilf made in the interview [msdn.com] on Channel9 is that Linux was "very different" from Windows. (He then added that either one, other, or both were "very different" from OSX.)

    How true is this? I only ask because I have had some experience with MVS (the operating system which has no concept of "files" or "directories") and Tandem (whose weird features I can't remember enough to describe), and I would describe both of those as "very different" from UNIX or Windows.

    When it comes down to it, UNIX and Windows look pretty similair to me. They both support WIMP GUIs. They both have concepts of files and directories. They both have users and groups and permissions. They both have preemptive multitasking and multithreading.

    The whole reason that Hilf stated that "Linux is very different from Windows" was part of the justification as to why Microsoft would not build applications for Windows (which was transparent and deceitful). If my belief is correct (that Linux is "similar enough" to Windows), then my opinion of Hilf falls through the floor. Am I correct that Linux is "similar enough" to Windows?
    • Am I correct that Linux is "similar enough" to Windows?

      These days it isn't terribly important that platforms resemble each other that much. Applications just need some common APIs and little elbow grease to smooth over the things APIs don't cover. Just about every major FOSS app can be run on Windows. To the extent that developers are responsible for interoperability, the FOSS world has done its part.

      Another way to take this is that MS must not be very good at making clean code if they're incapable
    • Am I correct that Linux is "similar enough" to Windows?

      Not really, there are some major architectural differences. What you highlight are the superficial similarities. For example, the graphical interface in Windows is a fundamental part of the kernel. In Linux, like Unix, its optional.

      Steve
    • Different enough I hope.
      Thats a bad road to go down.

      You'll have M$ following in SCO's footsteps claiming there is M$ code in the Linux kernel.

      Should keep the legal profession in a job for many years to come.
    • The platforms are very different in many ways. But having said that, at work I run the MS Office suite via WINE.
  • What would the world look like if MS figured out that they might be able to produce Linux apps, and have their Windows monopoly, too.

    MS Desktop Environment. An X window manager, and the ONLY way to run MS Office and MS Visual Studio on Linux.

    MS GUI for Samba. Runs in MS Desktop Environment. Opensource backend, closed source front end. Heck, if it runs on a proprietary MSDE, it could even be opensourced!

    Same for IE. Maybe even an IIS than runs on Linux.

    Weird thoughts. Not sure if they make business sense, or the traditionally sociopathic MS could think such thoughts.

    I could see them doing it, and somehow managing to maintain a 'detente' with the open-source world. All-in-all, it might be a good thing for the market, and for consumers. You can get Windows (whatever edition), or you can get Linux, and run an interface on top of it that looks and acts like Windows.

    Both will cost you $199. Both will run your MS apps. Pick and choose whatever you like.

    Feels like an MS strategy to me, and you know what?

    I can live with it. Just make sure it still uses some Opensource stuff as backends (CUPS, SANE, SAMBA), and I'll even buy it;

    Especially if MS would use its immense market power to force Adobe and other top vendors to release their apps for the MSDE Linux environment.
    • Ahh.. but microsoft has offered closed-source binary stuff for linux in the past.

      However, it always sucked donkey balls. Not because it was binary (after all, oracle on linux works just fine, as do other many other vendors closed source stuff) but because it was poorly designed, crashy, and just all around pile of doggie poo -- rather par for microsoft software really.

    • MS-only Linux environment (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KMSelf ( 361 ) <karsten@linuxmafia.com> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @11:32PM (#12473424) Homepage

      To what end?

      I discussed and dismissed this possibility years ago. The problems with implementation are these:

      • Microsoft can't own the kernel, within legal compliance of GPL. So any modifications they're doing are going to be restricted to a layer running above the kernel, and the possibility of restricting this in a way as to only allow the "Microsoft World" to run is low.
      • If it's anything running on X, then other X apps will run. Very little win.
      • If it's a customized X environment, incompatible with standard X servers, then at the worst users are restricted to running two displays on their system, and toggling between them.
      • As you might notice, most of these options imply a significant loss in functionality, which raises the question of why anyone would choose such a product (this does assume, of course, choice...).
      • If there's one thing Linux excels at, it's running worlds within worlds. Xnest, VNC, VMWare, Xen, UML, and remote access all provide ways of accessing multiple environments simultaneously, whether hosted locally or remotely. The ability to lock-in the user on a given environment (among Microsoft's key success factors) is exceptionally difficult to attain.

      My summary of this scenario, posted in 1998, read:

      • Microsoft can supply a Win32 API to Linux.
      • They can probably not integrate it with the OS due to the GPL.
      • They can probably not deny simultaneous access to alternate APIs on the same machine.
      • Without the OS/API/machine stranglehold, MS loses its leverage over the PC and the computer industry.
      • MS can participate in the Linux market. They cannot do so on the terms they have become accustomed to in the past decade.

      I don't see anything that's changed in 7 years (other than the lines in my face getting clearer....)

  • Martin Taylor: Resistence is futile. You will be assimilated.
    Bill Hilf: I am a non-Microsoft guy working at Microso.f.. aaaaarrrrgggghhhhh ... Resistence is futile ... You will be ... Locutus?
  • they couldn't beat or break open source
    so now they have to work with it

    makes sense really -- for years they had no serious competition -- they still don't on the desktop

    but the mac's recent resurgence on the desktop and the rise of linux and BSD on servers has to be dealt with -- how could microsoft not have an OSS and OS X lab?

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