Everybody Loves Raymond, Especially Microsoft

The following is a cautionary tale for tech recruiters everywhere - do a little research on your recruiting target first. About a week ago, "Mr. Raymond's first visit to Redmond; he gave a talk on open source there in June of 1999. He further notes a chat with former Microsoft exec Steven Walli over dinner regarding Microsoft's practices in 2004. ComputerWorld notes that an email exchange with Linux creator Linus Torvalds, arguably as important to the open source movement as Mr. Raymond, shows that not everyone took the response as a joke: "It just makes it even harder for people to even approach the (open source) side, when they then end up having to worry about ... public humiliation." The lesson for readers of this article today is "email does not convey tone." Mr. Raymond notes on his site that he was polite to Mr. Walters on the phone. The email response, which here