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On odd-numbered days people accuse companies the size of Microsoft of being stodgy, plodding, and bureaucratic, unable to ship anything in less than five years

On odd-numbered days people accuse companies the size of Microsoft of being stodgy, plodding, and bureaucratic, unable to ship anything in less than five years because of all the meetings and safeguards and red tape. On even-numbered days people accuse companies like Microsoft of not having enough meetings and safeguards. How could they green-light some contractor's code without triple-checking it against all the potential competitors on the web? Maybe consulting an IP lawyer. Maybe hold up the release of the code for three or four months, just to be sure. Get the CEO to sign off on it. The moral is: Microsoft is sometimes good, and Microsoft is sometimes bad, but Microsoft will always be criticized. In this case it looks to me like they did the right thing. They hired a contractor. They gave the contractor the power to get things done without constant handholding. In return, they made the contractor pledge in writing to uphold certain standards. Now the contract has been violated, and Microsoft took immediate action, and this press release is part of the result. It looks so innocent, but what it says is this: These contractors have failed us for the last time. Now witness the awesome destructive power of our legal team. You can't go through life constantly triple-checking everything. That's what contracts and insurance are for.

ilamont 17y ago
"On odd-numbered days people accuse companies the size of Microsoft of being stodgy, plodding, and bureaucratic, unable to ship anything in less than five years because of all the meetings and safeguards and red tape." There's a Chinese idiom for organizations like Microsoft: "The Big Tree Catches The Wind." Because of their size and history, the company gets called on things that smaller companies never do. And yes, kudos to them for farming out the job to someone else, and giving the contractor to do work without constant handholding. But shame on them for not catching this blatant ripoff of a well-known competitor before launching this to the PRC market. The Plurk clone is not something the legal team should have triple-checked. It's something the China microblog product manager should have spotted on when mockups and specs were passed around.

ilamont 17y ago

"On odd-numbered days people accuse companies the size of Microsoft of being stodgy, plodding, and bureaucratic, unable to ship anything in less than five years because of all the meetings and safeguards and red tape." There's a Chinese idiom for organizations like Microsoft: "The Big Tree Catches The Wind." Because of their size and history, the company gets called on things that smaller companies never do. And yes, kudos to them for farming out the job to someone else, and giving the contractor to do work without constant handholding. But shame on them for not catching this blatant ripoff of a well-known competitor before launching this to the PRC market. The Plurk clone is not something the legal team should have triple-checked. It's something the China microblog product manager should have spotted on when mockups and specs were passed around.