Open source advocate Eric Raymond has reviewed a copy of what is purported to be an internal Microsoft document that was presented at a Microsoft internal Linux Strategic Review held at the Microsoft offices in Berlin during Sept. 2002. In this article, Raymond comments on the memo and provides some tactical advice for open-source advocates based on what has been learned from the memo.

Quoting from the introduction to the alleged Microsoft internal memo (as published by Raymond) . . .

Research E-Bulletin: Attitudes Towards Shared Source and Open Source Research Study

Due to the sensitive nature of this information, please forward with discretion only to those people who can clearly gain value from it.. For those members of the Linux Strategic Review Core and Virtual Teams, this information is for background use/understanding during the Linux Strategic Review.

Executive Summary

This mail provides a detailed summary of the results of the Attitudes Towards Shared Source & Open Source Research Project managed by Kathryn Marsman and directed by David Kaefer and Jason Matusow. The Shared Source project was developed to provide a greater understanding of how key audiences perceive Open Source, Linux, Shared Source, and the GPL and which messages will be effective with each audience. The survey was fielded in the U.S., Brazil, France, Germany, Sweden, & Japan with developers, IT and non-IT BDMs, IT Pros and Issue Elites. Please note that save for the U.S., the individual country and audience sample sizes are extremely small. The survey questionnaire and samples were developed collaboratively by Redmond, the subsidiaries and the survey vendor. All data collection utilized a telephone-based interviewing process. The study fielded between late-July and September 2001. The detailed summary below drills into OSS and Linux familiarity and favorability, those reasons people give for being supportive of OSS and Linux, Shared Source familiarity and favorability, and OSS, Linux and Shared Source messaging. Key takeaways follow . . .

The full article by Eric Raymond is available here . . .

[Please note: LinuxDevices.com has been unable to independently confirm the existence of the Microsoft memo which is the subject of Raymond's article]

 
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