After some suspiscion I did a little research on the survey that apparently Microsoft is giving to Linux users on why they use Linux. Now I have to correct myself. Apparently it's not Microsoft that is doing this, but one of their employees, aside and not as part of his job at M$. Or at least, it appears? You can't believe anything you read but here's some info I found...

SurveyMonkey.com is a survey generator site, of course. Pretty basic, they have free and paid services ($19.95/mo. for paid plan) and testimonials that are from mostly companies, according to their site.

Why would M$ use SurveyMonkey I wondered? Well, they wouldn't. But what's to say what one of their employees on the side would be doing or using?

I looked up "Michael Surkan" on Microsoft.com site and found a link here that verifies he really is a program manager at Microsoft, and works with Networking, of all things (hmmmm... ):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/itcommunity/chats/trans/network/net0512.asp

On this page he says:

"Host: Michael (Microsoft)
I am a program manager in secure network services, and work primarily with 3rd party interoperability."

I also found this post from him on the internet via a few tries at google:

http://lists.gslug.org/pipermail/gslug-general/2003-November/000086.html

He gives his mail address domain as windows.microsoft.com

This is a mailing list of the Greater Seattle Linux User's Group, which is right in his workplace's home town obviously.

Looking all this up, it does appear to be legit.

But one wonders the real reasons now... is he trying to find a way to make Windows networking much like Linux? Or how to make a user-friendly version of Windows based on Linux? It's no secret M$ has been plagued by more security holes than swiss cheese lately. Maybe they are trying to grab from Linux something to save their arse with?? Who knows. I just hope if they do use OpenSource in their projects, they don't turn around and pull an SCO on us (not that they'd win... I don't think SCO will win either from what I've been reading).

aaaannnnnnd. someone couldn't have done the same serach you did, found a name at Microsoft and then posted the survey under the said found name as a way to validate the survey?

While it seems plausible he really created and posted, I'm still a skeptic.

Sounds too much like one of those "they are going to start charging for emails" type of emails.

That's why my subject line has a question mark on it, and I said it "appears" to be legit, (not it *is* legit - though I guess some can mistaken "appears" as to meaning "is", but I personally choase the former word to indicate it looked like it without saying it actually was).

I'm still skeptic of anything revolving around M$ but I was just curious.

Also, there's no real list of programmers on the M$ site, so unless someone knows a specific name, it's an odd chance that they would find him. Of course, they could also look up things like "Networking" and "programming" or something... I guess.

Or attended the said chat session...

But who would want to do such a bizzare thing anyway, and why?

I'm just going to see how this plays out. Probably will fizzle anyway. But it was rather curious to look into...

The webmaster for my LUG had this, and made a point of checking with the more knowledgeable LUG members (not me, I'm as thick as 10 toilet seat's nailed together - though there are some SERIOUSLY knowledgeable IT pro's amongst the group), they seem very in favour of giving it a good "IGNORING".

just my worth

regards

John