Talk:Jim Allchin

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This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or if there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

Contents

[edit] Fast news!

[1] beat the wire services by 12 minutes! SchmuckyTheCat 19:11, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cairo

Was Cairo really a replacement for Windows NT or was this sentence worded incorrectly?

Allchin's first high-profile project at Microsoft was the Cairo operating system that was originally intended to replace Windows NT.

Thanks in advance. When this is straightened out, someone can put this back in the article. — Alex (T|C|E) 05:44, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Showstopper! by G. Pascal Zachary, page 148: "He saw the Cairo project as the successor to NT..."
Breaking Windows by David Banks, page 49: "Gates put Allchin in charge of Microsoft's most ambitious project ever, a future successor to NT code-named Cairo."
Is this enough? AlistairMcMillan 14:50, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I guess. The reason I removed it is because it wasn't mentioned in the Cairo article. What I thought is that Windows NT was part of the Cairo project. Thanks for clearing that up. — Alex (T|C|E) 20:50, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Controversies

Here's the text of the section:

During the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial, emails sent by Allchin to other Microsoft executives were entered as evidence by the government lawyers to back up their claim that the integration of Internet Explorer and Windows was more to do with their competition with Netscape Communications Corporation than innovation.

In 1991, Allchin was cited as saying, "We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger."

In August 1998, Allchin asked an engineer named Vinod Valloppillil to analyse the threat to the Windows platform from the open source movement and the Linux operating system. Valloppillil wrote two memos that were intended for Senior Vice-President Paul Maritz (at the time, the most senior executive after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer). Both memos leaked and became known as the Halloween documents.

On September 29, 1998, Allchin was deposed to respond to the testimony of Professor Edward Felten. He later testified in court from February 1 to February 4, 1999. Most of his testimony centered around video-taped demonstrations that were exhibited in Microsoft's defense, and later found to have been falsified.

In May 2002, Allchin testified before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly during the settlement hearing between Microsoft and the nine states and the District of Columbia, resulting from the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial. Allchin was called to testify on two issues, however it was the first that gained the most publicity. In relation to the issue of sharing technical API and protocol information used throughout Microsoft products, which the states were seeking, Allchin alleged that releasing this information would increase the security risk to consumers.

"It is no exaggeration to say that the national security is also implicated by the efforts of hackers to break into computing networks. Computers, including many running Windows operating systems, are used throughout the United States Department of Defense and by the armed forces of the United States in Afghanistan and elsewhere."

In May 2004, Judge J. Frederick Motz ordered Microsoft to investigate Burst.com's claim that, in 2000, Allchin ordered Microsoft employees to destroy email after 30 days and not to archive their email, suggesting that this deletion policy might be an effort to eliminate material that would later be damaging in court. This case was settled out of court in March 2005, with Microsoft agreeing to pay Burst.com $60 million for nonexclusive rights to Burst.com's media player software.

It's unlikely that any of these points is untrue, but please source and add as appropriate; this is the bio of a living person. -- «klaus»

[edit] Burst

The situation with Burst is quite confusing and it should be removed. The facts are hard to figure out. It is hard to show what was really said and just having pieces reprinted is insuffient to warrant inclusion. Burst sued Microsoft. Burst sued Apple. Burst now has a dispute with Real. Please read their web site. After reading it I think you will agree with me that this section should be deleted. Irpac (talk) 18:57, 15 May 2008 (UTC)