MS's Hilf Named Windows Server Marketer

netbuzz writes "The director of Microsoft's Open Source Lab, Bill Hilf, has added a new duty — general manager of Windows server marketing — to his already established role of shepherding the company's efforts to have open source software peacefully coexist with Microsoft technologies. What the company calls a 'natural evolution' of Hilf's job description may not be considered quite so natural among segments of the open source community that eye every Microsoft move with suspicion if not hostility." Bill Hilf answered Slashdot's questions two years back and sounded quite friendly to OSS; yet at other times he has come off like a hardcore Microsoftie.

Migrating to Linux?

[speaker of the truth]

Given the failure that Microsoft Server is, could it be migrating to an OSS alternative?

It makes sense

[astrashe]

Marketing Windows servers involves a lot of convincing people not to run Linux instead. Knowing about Linux probably helps.

Embrace, Extetend, Exterminate

[Zombie Ryushu]

Windows Server do not at all co-exist with with Linux or any other type of server. Virtually all interoperability of Windows Servers and Linux Clients, or Linux Servers and Windows Clients is done through Reverse engineering of Windows SMB. So that makes Samba absolutely indespensible.

If you have have a Linux Server and a Heterogeneous or even one Windows client, you have no choice but to run Samba because Windows only talks to Windows.

Now before you go hauling off talking about Kerberos Realm mode:
That mode is completely useless. With Kerberos Realm mode, you have no Domain functionality, your machine is reverted to Workgroup status. No roaming profiles, no policies, no drive mapping scripts. So repeat after me, "Kerberos Realm Mode is fucking Horrible!" and nobody uses it.

Now. So lets say you go the Samba Domain Controller Route. In fact, lets go ideal and say you have someone who really knows what they are doing. Samba Domain Controller With Kerberos, NT4 SP6 Policy Editor Running under Wine, with LDAP Backend, either with OpenLDAP or Fedora DS.

Well.

Your Linux Clients work just fine. They login, get account data out of LDAP, Authenticate with Kerberos, maybe use AFS or Samba with Kerberos Authentication. (That works only for Linux boxen under Samba 3.0)

Your Windows Clients? See a bizzare Hellscape of situations where it looks like its surrounded on all sides by "Windows NT 4.9" Servers that all claim to be primary domain controllers. The Kerberos mode? They ignore that and fall back to NTLMv2. They can't even tell the Kerberos or LDAP Servers are even there. Still pretty decent interoperability.

lets take the reverse.

Well, Windows Servers will run AD, thats all they will do, thats all they have done.

Windows clients, GPO, all that shit. Linux Clients? Well. You can try the "Services For Unix" method with Kerberos and LDAP trick, but its doubtful that will work. Your best chance again, Samba with Winbind. Linux has too reverse engineer everything. Microsoft policy is very is not Embrace, Extend, Exterminate with Windows Servers. Its just Exterminate. To Microsoft, the only good Linux User is a Dead Linux User.

Corporate Musical Chairs

[Doc Ruby]

Microsoft's execs have no expertise in the subject of the departments they direct (except maybe legal or marketing). They are expert in being executives. I once met for a long time with the MS "Chief Security Officer", in my capacity advising the NYC City Council (legislature). He knew nothing about security, not even the recent history of MS (in)security under his predecessor. And I've watched how MS shuffles its execs.

All that the person in the job needs to know is their marching orders from where the only real MS strategy comes from: the mutual work of the (real) geniuses in legal and marketing. That's all MS is good at, and all it needs to be good at. They need to know how to talk to the other execs in their job, and the inevitable lawyers from other companies and the government, and marketers from everywhere.

So he's a "server marketer". It means nothing that he's also an "open source exec". All that means is that he's going to meetings about "open source" and "servers", which we already know since MS has a major strategic alliance with Novell over Linux, and Novell just won proof that Unix belongs to Novell, and *nix runs the only competition to MS servers. But I wouldn't expect this guy to know that until he takes the job.

Re:It makes sense

[Locutus]

there are people who still think that Bill Hilf was hired to educate Microsoft on how to work with GNU/Linux and open source software and they are fools. He was hired to educate Microsoft on how to market Microsoft Windows and Microsoft software over GNU/Linux and OSS. He built a lab running all kinds of OSS project and they evaluated what was good, bad, ugly and how Microsoft software could be marketed against that which they learned. Bill Hilf's roll as marketing guy for Windows Server was always the plan and makes complete sense given his initial role.

So stop kidding yourselves into thinking Microsoft wants to work with GNU/Linux and OSS. They want it gone and they want everyone using only Microsoft software. There is not half way. There is no interoperability. Those are marketing lies as they continue to find ways to keep customers on their software.

And Bill Hilf is no friend of any OSS by virtue of who he accepted a job from and what that job is. IMO.

LoB

Re:Lacking in insight?

[tomhudson]

If they really wanted to hear something insightful, they'd get the "enemy camp" in for a truth-fest.

The simple fact is, they don't want to hear the truth, which starts with the average Windows user HATING Microsoft. If you think linux fans are bad, try someone who is forced to use Windows on a daily basis, when they have a Mac at home.

But forget the MacHeads. The average Microsoft customer doesn't use Windows because they like it - they use Windows because it came with their computer. They bought it, they paid for it, they can't return it for a refund, so they're darned well going to use it!

That's the point about unbundling (to bring this back on-topic).

As for Hilf, he doesn't "get" open source. He's the guy who said open source was dead in 2007, because "even Linus is paid to write code" - when in fact, that shows that open source is quite the opposite of dead - its so useful that people are being paid to write code and give it away.

That last scares the sh*t out of Microsoft - that businesses have found it profitable to give away the very stuff that Microsoft charges for.

Hilf doesn't "get" that, so he's not going to be an effective counterweight.

kdawson is bad for society.

[adolf]

"Microsoftie"?

Honestly, sir. Your unending, rigidly-biased McCarthy-esque [wikipedia.org] front-page banter is tiresome and uninteresting, and in no way promotes productive discourse.

Instead, it serves only give you the appearance of being callous and bigoted. And while you may, in fact, be callous and bigoted, the front page of Slashdot is no place in which to display such commentary.

Slashdot, at its tenth year, remains the pinnacle of dispersion for all news matters relating to open source technology, and continues to grow broader in scope of audience by the moment as more and more people become interested this very important concept.

Yet, it is as if you seek to squander that fame, and use it as a means to broadcast your own fallacious shallowness. This quite plainly reflects poorly upon Slashdot as a business unit, but also more significantly upon its own readership. It is nothing but detrimental to the idea of open-source software, and indeed is an affront toward its widespread acceptance.

Please, stop. Every time you say something so thoughtless and misguided, as is occurrent of regular frequency, we all lose a little more credibility.

You are doing us all a tremendous disservice.