I think this is a great gesture. One, it's from Microsoft Germany, which in my mind makes it seem more genuine. (High open source adoption, and I would be surprised if it was blessed by Redmond.)<p>Two, it acknowledges the Halloween memos. This could have easily been left out.<p>Three, it's a cake. This new(?) cake tradition seems to say, "regardless of politics and history, cheers to you and your team on your achievements".<p>Finally, I don't think anyone can deny that Linux supporters have historically been brash and rude in the past when talking about Micro$ux Winblows. The rock at the window doesn't seem so out of place.
"Microsoft or Linux" -> "Microsoft and Linux"<p>Speaks to how far Linux has come. This might be just be my isolated geeky viewpoint, but does anyone else see a world without Microsoft more likely than a world without Linux?
From my point of view, that's a bizarre depiction of history.<p>Tux started the discord, by throwing a rock at Windows? What's that supposed to represent?<p>I understand about the Halloween memo, though it wasn't Linux that Microsoft was trying to frighten.<p>And what's with Tux jacking up a penguin to try to make it as tall as Bill? What's that supposed to represent?<p>Microsoft is always shown as the innocent bystander. Weird.
If Microsoft wants to send a video gift to Linux, how about dedicating all their video codec patents to the public domain? Or making Ogg the default media format?
It's important to know that it's not Microsoft as a whole that hates Linux, the company is really split into three ideological factions: (1) The Gates Worshipers, (2) The Open Source Geeks and (3) The iWorlders<p>Those in (1) are the old guard, and opinions are hard to change. They tend to be near the top and want to return to the Bill Gates way of the iron fist.<p>Those in (2) are most of the programmers/devtools folks at Microsoft. They grew up and went to school (and maybe even came from academia) using Open Source and still love it. They are why you see things like F# being open sourced.<p>Then there are those in (3) which tend to be more on the XBox/Windows Phone side. Just like Apple, they don't really care about Linux. What they want is to offer another walled garden so they can take your money with little effort.
in case anyone was wondering what the date is and how it was picked:<p><a href="http://www.gatorlug.org/node/208" rel="nofollow">http://www.gatorlug.org/node/208</a>