The Architects of Halloween. (Updated) Nov 6, 1998, 13 :00 UTC (78 Talkback[s]) (21230 reads)
Here's an in-depth look at the personalities behind the Halloween documents.
By Dave Whitinger
Many people have written in with new information (isn't cooperative development great?), hence I have updated this
page with the latest word.
Vinod Valloppillil, a Microsoft employee, has recently become famous
for writing an internal Microsoft memorandum outlining (in incredible detail) Linux, Perl, Apache, Sendmail, and other
Open Source projects.
Vinod is obviously versed in the open HTTP protocol, as evidenced by his various posts to the
ircache
and HTTP-wg lists.
He is also known to lurk on other lists, including the
NETSYS Firewall list.
Vinod received a BSEcon Degree and a BS Systems Engineering Degree from the University of Pennsylvania before accepting
his position with Microsoft. He originally started work at Microsoft as an intern working on the
MS SNA Server and is currently on the
Microsoft Proxy Server team. It appears that he is known internally as an expert in Open Standards and protocols.
Josh Cohen: Has posted an encouraging note to the linux-kernel list. Rumor has it that he was previously a Netscape employee, regularly attends IETF meetings and is active in the HTTP and web-related groups.
George Spix: An Altavista search shows this page describing an internal Microsoft page, but the link is dead. From this we know that at one point, there was an internal MS page that mentioned Linux and this fellow's name together.
Michael Nelson: Altavista finds 67 webpages, many leading to posts made to linux-kernel and Big-Linux. In addition there are several web pages that suggest he is involved with Windows NT, OLE, BSD UNIX, and Linux Development. His name is common, however, so the possibility exists that there are different Michael Nelsons.
David Treadwell: Has co-authored the book Windows Sockets: An Open Interface for Network Programming under Microsoft Windows, January 1993. (Link)
Oshoma Momoh: A graduate in mathematics at the University of Waterloo, is now a Program Manager with Microsoft.
David Gunter: Appears to have written the QUE book, Special Edition: Using Linux. He appears to have once been an enormous advocate of Linux.
Bernard Aboba: Appears to be interested in the MBONEd mailing list, has written the FAQ for the comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc newsgroup, and previously held an MS position of shepherding the porting of various products to OS/2. Used to be an active member of BMUG (Berkeley Macintosh Users Group) and thus was a serious Macintosh advocate for many years.
Jim Allchin: Microsoft's "Senior Vice President, Personal and Business Systems Group". He's the executive responsible for all the various flavors of Windows, including WinNT.
Ben Slivka: According to a deposition in late 1997, he is "Project Leader at Microsoft with
responsibility for designing the
next-generation user interfaces for
Windows... employed by
Microsoft as a software developer since
June 1985. From the summer of 1994 until
August 1996,... Project Leader in
Microsoft's development of the
Internet Explorer feature of Windows
95. "
Stephanie Ferguson: Previously a Product Manager for the Proxy Server, was promoted to NT 5.0, and is now in a position with the Server Systems group. She's a manager, rather than an engineer.
Charlie Kindel: Co-authored the DCOM specification and makes frequent posts to comp.os.ms-windows.programming.ole.
Dwight Krossa: Internet product manager in the desktop and business systems division at Microsoft Corp. Was quoted as saying, "By using ISAPI, WebMaster is providing our customers with a NNTP solution which is tightly integrated with Internet Information Server, enabling customers to seamlessly access news groups."
The memo makes mention of "Printed copies for PaulMa review". PaulMa would be Paul Maritz, one of the eight members of the Microsoft Executive Committee, along with Gates, Ballmer, Herbold, Higgins, Myhrvold, Allchin, and Raikes.
Thanks to all for the feedback we've received to help make this research more complete. We feel that in competing with Microsoft, we must be knowledgable of their talent.
