I've heard a saying that basically goes, one has to "sleep" with the enemy to beat the enemy. Microsoft is doing exactly that. Thanks to Oscar Lee for letting us know of Microsoft's new Linux office employing 1,000 in an effort to gain a better understanding of its competition.
The software giant, which considers Linux one of the biggest threats to its business, recently finished installing all the hardware and software needed to do just that in its Enterprise Engineering Center, where Microsoft recreates business customers' systems to test and demonstrate Microsoft software deployed on their networks.
But that's as far as Linux will get within Microsoft, said Martin Taylor, the company's new strategist for Linux. The stack of servers is solely for research into the open-source software, in which the underlying code can be downloaded, shared and modified freely.
"It's to understand the strong points and understand the not-so-strong points," said Taylor.