Microsoft Sponsoring, Speaking At Open Source Show

Microsoft plans to make a substantial showing at the upcoming Open Source Business Conference, in a continuation of the software giant’s campaign to make nice with open source and support open-source projects on Windows.

In a blog post, Peter Galli, open-source community manager at Microsoft, laid out some of what the company will do at the OSBC event that runs from 17 March to 18 in San Francisco.

For starters, Microsoft will be a Platinum sponsor of the event and will call on one of its emerging stars to keynote. Stuart McKee, Microsoft’s national technology officer for the United States, will deliver a keynote on 18 March.

According to Galli: “In his keynote, titled “Open Source at Microsoft: Meeting customer, developer and partner needs through a diversified ecosystem,” McKee will talk about the opportunities for open source applications running on and with Microsoft platforms—from Windows, to SharePoint to Azure—and how increased flexibility and choice for the consumers of these technologies is good for everyone involved.”

Galli added, “As US national technology officer, [McKee] is responsible for driving a comprehensive set of technical and business strategies for the US Public Sector State and Local segment.”

In short, McKee is something of a big gun for Microsoft. Galli said, “Prior to joining Microsoft, [McKee] served as the director of the Washington State Department of Information Services (DIS) on Governor Gary Locke’s executive cabinet. … [And he] also worked as the vice president of Global Internet Operations for the Walt Disney Company, where he directed operations for a number of the Internet’s most visible sites, including ESPN.com, Disney.com, ABCNews.com and Go.com.”

Also on 18 March, Brian Goldfarb, Microsoft’s lead product manager for Web Platform and Tools, will take part in a panel called, “The Web Is the Platform,” as will Chris Blizzard from Mozilla, Dion Almaer of Palm and Dave McAllister of Adobe, Galli said.