Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Video, Peter Galli

Team Microsoft Sings "Them Incubator Blues" at ApacheCon

Peter Galli — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:33:00 GMT

As you probably know, Microsoft was both a sponsor and active participant at ApacheCon 2009 in Oakland, California last week.

But what you might not know is that we also showed our lighter, more fun side, when we participated in the Lightning Talks, which were held on Thursday evening, November 5, during a reception with plenty of popcorn, beer and wine.

As my colleague Jas Sandhu noted in his blog about this - and where you can also find the song's lyrics - the talks are a lively, spontaneous ApacheCon tradition with speakers getting about 5 minutes to poke at each other, the projects, technology, community etc ... and have a bit of fun!

The singing and dancing Microsoft team was led by Kent Brown, the Product Manager for Windows Communication Foundation, who was not only the singer, songwriter and guitar player, but also the author of 'Them Incubator Blues,' which is very tongue-in-cheek and loosely based on his experience participating in the Stonehenge Project and working with the community.

He was joined by me, Microsoft's open source community manager; Tanya Young, our chief cat herder at the conference; and Jas Sandhu, a Senior Technical Evangelist. It was great fun and we hope you enjoy it!

Video courtesy of Mladen Turk from Red Hat.

MindTouch, Microsoft, and Social Enterprise Collaboration

Peter Galli — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:33:00 GMT

In this, our second video filmed at an open source company, the spotlight falls on MindTouch, whose Deki Wiki enables users to connect teams, enterprise systems, publishing systems, Web services and Web 2.0 applications.

The first video talked to developers at BitRock about their product as well as their thoughts on open source versus proprietary software, and can be viewed here.

The MindTouch Deki, which is built on top of the Mono, the open source .Net implementation, is downloaded some 2,000 times a day.

You'll see and hear Damien, a graphics designer, talk about his one-eyed fish and the disappearance of Phil, the filter feeder, and how he is only going to have community fish in his next tank, fish who like one another and work well together.

Aaron Fulkerson, the CEO and one of the company's founders, talks about his passion for getting the product running on Windows, with Windows Server 2008 and a Microsoft installer. For him, it really doesn't matter what technology the solution is implemented on, as long as the company has delivered a great product to the market that is "free, as in freedom, as in free speech."

While there is a groundswell of community adoption around MindTouch's Linux deployments, lots of large companies are also asking for deployments on Windows. In fact, its core market is those people who like both .Net and open source.

Take a look for yourself, and see what they have to say.

What do BitRock Developers Really Think of Microsoft?

Peter Galli — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:52:00 GMT

What do open source companies and their developers actually think of Microsoft and its relationship with them and their communities, and how much do they have in common?

We decided to find out, so we sent a camera crew to two open source companies - BitRock and MindTouch - to see what they had to say.

In this first video, several developers from BitRock - which was founded in 2003, created the BitNami installer, and provides an automated solution for Open Source application deployment - talk about many topics, ranging from smoking, to getting their picture on beer bottles, to Microsoft and open source.

You'll also see Erica Brescia, BitRock's CEO, express surprise that Microsoft would actually want to film open source developers, particularly those who are candid about the sometimes troubled relationship between the software company and the open source community.