Struck today by just how many Microsoft bloggers there are. In a world where many expect Microsoft to be the evil empire and doubtless to have made all of their staff kill goats on the altar, it’s refreshing to see so much obviously unvalidated and unapproved commentary. Could this be a fascinating model for the MPs blogs that the VoxP folks champion so regularly?
Some of them have disclaimers, although not perhaps in the sense you might expect, e.g. (from Tim Ewald)
“LEGAL STUFF BECAUSE I WORK FOR A BIG COMPANY: In case it wasn’t clear to anyone, these posts are provided “as is”. They are not guaranteed to be useful or even correct – though I do the best I can – and they confer no rights”
Some of them even have code there. Not that I follow a line of it anymore. Been far too long since I had to write some code.
And perhaps my favourite, from Becky Dias:
“Who cares about technology? It’s all a matter of business”
I wonder if the policy is laissez-faire at Msft or whether it’s just too hard to track it and crack down. After all, if you were told not to do it, you could just put another one up somewhere else as an anonymous feed and deny all knowledge. Plausible deniability? Probably.
All in, can only be a good thing.