Google may be steadily luring away Microsoft’s top people, but the Redmond giant is fighting back with a renewed recruitment drive. Evidently the brain drain has affected Microsoft's HR staff, however, as someone thought it a good idea to try to hire Eric S Raymond, gun-toting, self-appointed ambassador for the open source empire - the scary, moustachioed bloke who modestly describes himself as having “[written] most of the theory and propaganda for [open source] and talked IBM and Wall Street and the Fortune 500 into buying in”. Sneak for one is disappointed that Raymond didn’t take up the offer. With any luck he might have gone the way of so many other Microsoft initiatives, and simply disappeared without trace.

13 Sep 2005