On Monday, in Red Hat’s backyard at All Things Open in Raleigh, word was that Microsoft representatives were saying an “important” announcement would be made at Tuesday morning’s keynote address by Mark Russinovich, CTO for Microsoft Azure. I was expecting something earth shattering, like maybe Redmond was going to port Office to Linux, or that Red Hat and MS were going to get together on some major project.

Evidently, the news was that the company is looking for more than a few good men and women who know their way around open source software. I use the word “evidently,” because the announcement was made rather subtly and without fanfare near the end of the keynote. It was slipped in as just another note in a talk about how Microsoft is serious about becoming a good open source citizen.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux




Thankfully, the organization’s infrastructure came through just fine, according to Todd Lewis, who is both the chair person for ATO and IT-oLogy’s Executive Director-Columbia.

Great. Just great.
The thing that is worrying or bothering you? Jump ahead 24 hours in your mind. What will you most likely be doing? Does that thing you are worrying about now have any bearing on your life 24 hours later? Has that thing you are worrying about followed you? Has worrying about it made it better or go away? No? Then stop worrying. If what you are worrying about isn’t going to be important 24 hours from now, just stop it. Stop injuring yourself. And for those who don’t realize it…worry can often lead to anger. In fact, it most often does.
Although some have been trying to sound the alarm, many of us have been lulled into complacency brought by a belief that Microsoft is no longer a real threat and that we are now free to concentrate all of our energies on growing Linux and FOSS, which is basically all we’ve wanted to do.
I haven’t seen this much hype since…well, since the last time Redmond came out with a new version of Windows.
We’ll start with the home user.