In yesterday’s eJournal I fulminated about Microsoft’s often-casual treatment of truth. Among the people who responded was Adam Barr, who said, among other things:
Where do you think the alleged lie happened? That is, who knew the truth but said something different: the PR agency? The marketing people they talked to? The technical people *they* talked to? The people working on the code who actually know the answer?
Here’s my take: I don’t know about Hotmail (actually I do know about Hotmail but it’s not the subject of this email), but I know about Windows 2000. First of all, Gomes statement that open source software is “used in several places deep inside several versions of Microsoft’s Windows software” is simply false, and shows an eagerness to get the scoop over actually digging for facts. His mention of TCP/IP is flat out wrong: that code was written by Microsoft. Now would you be happy if you read reporting about some other subject that was done like this? Is that how you personally report things? So celebrating this as great journalism is wrong.
Adam has posted more about this topic on Kuro5hin. It’s well worth reading.