While I haven’t really talked to many people about the news that Daniel Robbins, creator of Gentoo Linux, is now working for Microsoft, I think this could be a very good thing. His job is to help Microsoft understand Open-Source and community based projects. Anything that better helps Microsoft understand the benefits of Open Source Software has to be a good thing in my book.

It may surprise some people to learn that I’m not blindly anti-Microsoft. I don’t like some of their business practices. Actually, I don’t like a lot of their business practices, but mostly I don’t like them because many of their business choices hinder technology. The concepts of Open Source Software aren’t always the best solution in terms of furthering technology. I don’t really want to get into specifics here, but the point of all of this is that I think there could be a lot of unfair backlash for a leader in the Open Source world moving to the largest proprietary software company on the planet.

When the software business understands the importance and power of open source software and finds a way to add the focus and organization of a for profit business to it, technology benefits. I would use Apple’s Mac OS X as a prime example of this.

Also, I would like to state for the record that I cooked chicken today without burning down my apartment building.