I'd like to invite you to attend the last of the Michigan State University CSE colloquia for the 2008-2009 academic year: jointly sponsored as an AT&T Visiting Lecturer by the MSU LCT, and the CSE department, Sam Ramji will speak about

Open Source at Microsoft: The Past, Present and Future

in CommArts room 147, Friday May 1, at 11:00am. I encourage you all to attend and to forward this on to others who might be interested! As you know, open source software is playing an increasingly big part in education, academia, science, and business, and so I expect this to be a very interesting talk.

Contact me at ctb@msu.edu for further information.

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Abstract:

Since Microsoft established its Open Source Lab in Redmond more than five years ago, it has worked with many open source players to make Windows the best platform for all applications to run on. But this has not been without its challenges and there is a lot more work to be done on this front. This talk will cover the thinking behind Microsoft's current open source strategy and what this means for the software engineers of the future. It will also spotlight some innovative Open Source projects the company is supporting at universities across the world.

Biography:

Sam Ramji is the Senior Director of Platform Strategy leading Microsoft's platform strategy efforts across the company, including long-term strategic planning in the Windows Server and Tools organization. Sam's primary focus is to drive Microsoft's Linux and Open Source Strategy, working together with Microsoft technology development teams and open source communities to build interoperable solutions.

Prior to his current role at Microsoft, Sam was a Director of Emerging Business working on the Silicon Valley Campus where he managed relationships with Venture Capitalists and entrepreneurs. Prior to joining Microsoft, Sam led technical product strategy at BEA Systems, engineering teams building large-scale applications on Open Source software (at Ofoto.com) as well as hands-on development of client, client-server, and distributed applications on Unix, Windows, and Macintosh at prior companies.

Sam holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Cognitive Science from the University of California at San Diego, and is a member of the Institute for Generative Leadership.

Legacy Comments

Posted by gioby on 2009-05-02 at 06:32.

- <a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090421111327711"
>http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090421111327711</a>  - <a
href="http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pd
f">http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf</
a>

Posted by gioby on 2009-05-02 at 08:47.

Honestly, I don't trust Microsoft when they speak about open source
projects, neither I like the fact that they are trying to enter in the
bioinformatics field.    For example, this is the reason why I don't
like myExperiment. I used it, I registered and have been an active
user, but I always had the feeling that I wasn't in an open source
community.    Look at the pdf that I have posted in the other comment.
These people at Microsoft have been doing the worst actions possible
for years: they ruined other people's business and all standards they
have met, just to maintain their leadership.    I don't want to
imagine what they could do if they enter the bioinformatics field.
They would probably do that only to try to force people to use Windows
for doing research. And what they could be capable of doing to open
standards, just for their sake? Microsoft is really a danger, a
nightmare.

Posted by Titus Brown on 2009-05-03 at 21:11.

gioby, I sympathize.  I was hosting Sam for reasons unrelated to
bioinformatics research, but when we did talk about research I said I
only chose open technology platforms.  That was apparently quite a
common theme for him ;).    FWIW, it seems to me that Sam Ramji's
group is genuine in developing strategies by which Microsoft and open
source technologies can cooperate in ways beneficial to both.  I don't
have any intrinsic objection to that, and they're certainly getting
good at working with open source communities (see the PHP stuff
they've been doing, for example).