From: Hallam-Baker, Phillip
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 12:16 PM
<...>
As I said, you can either obsess about your hatred of Microsoft or
you can help solve the spam problem.
I never said that it was a fair choice. But it is a choice.
You can continue to defend Microsoft to the death, like the last tobacco
lobbyist left standing, or you can admit that they misrepresented their
intentions and stole us blind. Cooperating with the folks in Redmond is
neither our only choice nor our best choice. Their recent actions coupled
with their apparent desire to crush the open software movement makes it
clear that it is in our best interests to exclude them from this process.
In case it has escaped your attention, they have included SPF classic in
their patent application, which they did not invent. That is about as bad
faith a maneuver as I can imagine.
This has nothing to do with a vendetta against Microsoft, it is about having
the common sense not to work any group of people who offer collaboration,
sabotage the effort and then steal your work. To continue after what they
just did would prove that we've even dumber than we were the first time
around. Please, don't insult our intelligence by defending them any
further. They have nothing to offer technically and they have shown that we
have no mutual interests.
A second issue is that I think it's wholly inappropriate for any current
employee of Microsoft or one of its subsidiaries to comment on its actions
without speaking in an official capacity. Unless you are prepared to speak
for the company, reasonable decorum would have you refrain from commenting
on issues where you have such a large and obvious conflict of interest.
--
Seth Goodman