I presented at London Geek Night a few days ago about the contributions that Microsoft made to the open-source community in 2009.  My presentation was titled, “Hell Froze over, Pigs flew, Microsoft Went Open” Hell Froze Over, Pigs Flew, Microsoft Went Open View more presentations from ukdpe . This...

I read a great list of free applications on TechRadar that really enhance the usability of Windows 7 especially if you’re a power-user.  Windows 7 is great, but some of these apps really take window management to the next level!  There is a good mix of freeware and open-source software. ...

For those of you in open-source land, many of you have likely heard of the Mono Framework that is maintained by Novell with collaboration from Microsoft.  Mono is an open-source implementation of .NET that allows .NET developers to target platforms outside of Windows and hardware outside of x86...

In a surprise move, Sun Microsystems has been bought by Oracle.  The details are still a little lacking but few knew that while talks between IBM and Sun were breaking down, that Oracle was conducting covert negotiations. Much of the outcome from this acquisition will be determined by how Oracle...

Scott Guthrie details one of Microsoft’s new foray’s into FOSS software.  For those of you aren’t aware, MS-PL stands for “Microsoft Public License” and reads as follows:   This license governs use of the accompanying software. If you use the software, you accept this license. If you do not...

I found this InfoWorld article very interesting because it validates Microsoft’s strategy for the web and investing in enterprise web services and frameworks. Of course Slashdot always has an interesting slant on things, but overall, I think that most agree that the long-term strategy is no longer the...

Slashdot has posted one the more positive Microsoft posts I can remember in recent time discussing the release of Web Sandbox source code from folks from Live Labs . History The Web Sandbox builds upon Microsoft’s experience with DHTML, Windows Live web-based gadgets, and the Microsoft Research BrowserShield...

As a Microsoft employee, this picture just makes my heart tingle.  It’s great to know that that we not only have a technically superior virtualization platform but that its also cheaper to manage.  This picture is evidence that hosters actually pass on those manageability savings on to the...

Listen to the podcast where I get asked about my views on Microsoft’s collaboration story and commitment to the open source community.  This was a fantastic experience done late last March at the Windows Server 2008 launch.  If you listen, watch out for my “good save” when making references...

The Web Platform Installer Beta (Web PI) provides a single, free package for installing and configuring Microsoft's entire Web Platform, including IIS7, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Using the Web Platform Installer’s simple user interface...

According Techcrunch, Facebook will be open-sourcing the four major components of the FB Platform—namely, FMBL (markup language), FQL (query language), FJS (Javascript library) and the Facebook API.   No mention yet of which license they will choose, hopefully it will be BSD-like as GPL will...

Finally what the open-source community has been asking from Microsoft has come to fruition, we've released the Office Binary Format in it's entirety and put it under our IRREVOCABLE, GPL-compatible, legally binding Open Specification Promise .  This is an honest gesture by Microsoft to the developer...

This is what I call a healthy and civilized debate unlike much of the garbage and FUD being released by the blogosphere and press. If you aren't aware, Burton Group recently released a document outlining the business implications of ODF vs. OpenXML Although I agreed with the technical merits of the document...

Microsoft announced yesterday that Tafiti , the experimental Silverlight front-end for Live Search, has been released under the Microsoft Shared Source Permissive License *it's like BSD*.  Here is the announcement.   Internally this caused a lot of buzz on our enterprise search distribution...

I'm lazy today so I'll just copy an excerpt from Slashdot about something I will definitely be watching around open standards and file formats. lisah writes "Linux.com's Robin 'Roblimo' Miller will moderate a live debate today, Wednesday, December 5 at 1pm US EST (GMT -5), between the GNOME Foundation...

So I presented at Falkirk to an awesome audience about Search Server 2008 and had some interesting questions.  I've learned in my travels that geography plays a huge part in the sophistication of an audience.  Don't get me wrong, I am not insulting the caliber of talent in the room.  Presenting...

      Anyone who works with me knows that I'm a big OneNote fanatic!  Not only is it a great piece of software, it is a great development platform for ISVs.  One of the great things developers can do is tap into the OneNote API and extend functionality. David Tse is a program...