The Ozzie Effect?
Michael Desmond, founding editor of Redmond Developer News and Desmond
File blogger, is on vacation. Filling in for him this week is John Waters,
contributing editor of RDN.
All this openness at Microsoft is coming just as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates
goes into semi-retirement, so it's probably worth giving props to new Chief
Software Architect Ray Ozzie for what promises to be a smart move for the company,
long-term. Ozzie was reportedly the force behind a 2006 open source project
to create a translation
bridge between Microsoft OOXML and the ODF standard.
Back then, we saw the translator initiative as an early example of "the
Ozzie effect." He lacks his predecessor's love of the spotlight, but Mr.
Ozzie's influence on the company in an increasingly open and less Microsoft-centric
world bodes well. --John Waters
Posted on 02/28/2008