Besides the Fedora hot dog marketing strategy going on at LinuxTag in Berlin, another interesting aspect of this leading German Linux conference is the sponsors for this year’s event. Microsoft and Nokia are among the leading sponsors.
For this annual conference at the Berlin Messe about Linux, hence the name LinuxTag, one of the leading sponsors of the event is… Microsoft. Microsoft became a partner with LinuxTag for their 2011 event and they are back this year as a “partner”, per their 2012 web-site.
Microsoft’s sponsorship of LinuxTag 2012 is very present both on their web-site and in physical form at the event. Microsoft was also widely advertised at LinuxNacht, their usual evening reception for the event, with table-top Microsoft tri-folds and their logo on the projected slides. On Thursday during LinuxTag, there was also a Microsoft session entitled “Microsoft and Open Source: An Update on the Journey.”
The abstract for the Microsoft openness talk by James Utzschneider: “Microsoft has become increasingly open as a company and increasingly focused on investing in standards and interoperability as a way to provide customers with flexibility and choice, helping them optimize their mixed IT environments. In this, his second Linux Tag talk, James Utzschneider, Microsoft’s General Manager for Competitive Strategy, will share his perspective on Microsoft’s openness journey – including the company’s commitment to cross-platform interoperability, its current relationships with open source technologies and communities, and how customers and partners are responding.” I didn’t have the time to stop by this talk, but from those that I know who attended they all found Microsoft’s views to be a mix of bogus, comical, and entertaining remarks.