It’s long been known that Microsoft keeps an eye on its competitors, such as open source. As far back as 2006, its open source laboratory at Redmond housed more than 300 servers collectively running more than 15 versions of UNIX and 50 Linux distributions. That facility was in those days run a team of senior-level programmers and system administrators, some of whom were architects of popular Linux distributions or authors of well-regarded books. Doubtless very little has changed.
It also keeps tabs on Apple and develops applications for Apple’s products at its research and development centre in Mountain View.
Courtesy of The Guardian, I was made aware of a recent burglary at Microsoft’s research and development centre.
As can be seen, nothing of value was taken. 🙂 By far the most interesting part is that no MS products at all were purloined (was the thief a cool thief? Ed.).
IT news site The Register suggests that the thief might have hold of some unreleased Microsoft apps with his or her Apple devices.
El Reg’s piece concludes:
The office also houses Microsoft Exchange hosting servers, a less tempting target for a light-fingered thief.
Well, most servers do weigh a tad more than your average fondleslab. 🙂
Finally, this comment on The Guardian’s report raised a smile and a laugh:
According to some reports, they stole 50 Microsoft Surfaces at the same time, but they broke back in the next day to return them.