A Winning Strategy
I was reading about infamous Microsoft Technical “Evangelist” Jim Plamondon, at the suggestion of Matt Ray; I found this gem:
Mopping Up can be a lot of fun. In the Mopping Up phase, Evangelism’s goal is to put the final nail into the competing technology’s coffin, and bury it in the burning depths of the earth. Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry.
Emphasis mine, obviously.
Compare that with Linus’ eloquent comments in 2007 about his beloved Git:
You can disagree with me as much as you want, but during this talk, by definition, anybody who disagrees is stupid and ugly. So keep that in mind. … [Y]es, I have strong opinions. CVS users… if you actually like using CVS, you shouldn’t be here. You should be in some mental institution… somewhere else.
For all the cawing Linus has done over the years about how horrible Microsoft is, it’s nice to see that he at least learned how to employ a winning marketing strategy from them.