Microsoft hires SCO veteran as its Competitive Strategy guru
You can't make this stuff up. Sandy Gupta, whose UNIX experience was thoroughly discredited while at SCO for the paucity of his "analyses" of Linux's alleged infringement of SCO's UNIX code, has been hired by Microsoft as its director of Competitive Strategy within the Server & Tools Division.
From the press release:
Sandy Gupta is the kind of technology expert that Microsoft prides itself on having inside the company.
Well, no, Microsoft. This isn't, or should not be the kind of "expert" on which Microsoft prides itself. Microsoft has does so many things well and right, why does it have to do shockingly silly things like this? IBM and others have shredded Gupta's work for SCO, and a judge couldn't throw it out fast enough.
Gupta may be a great person, but he's not a UNIX, Linux, or Windows expert. Perhaps that's just what Microsoft wants? After all, SCO once said of Gupta that "he is able to laser-focus on product deliverables." If half-truths in the interest of competitive strategy are what Microsoft wants in terms of deliverables, Microsoft couldn't do better than to pull in the SCO team.
Disappointing. Shame on you, Microsoft.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
