Tim Bray, newly-minted Sun employee, alludes to a variation of the Valerie Plame affair, perpetrated by MSFT.
Personal disclosure: In 1997, as a result of signing a consulting contract with Netscape, I was subject to a vicious, deeply personal extended attack by Microsoft in which they tried to destroy my career and took lethal action against a small struggling company because my wife worked there. It was a sideshow of a sideshow of the great campaign to bury Netscape and I’m sure the executives have forgotten; but I haven’t. I should tell that story here sometime so that should my readers discern an attitude problem regarding Redmond, it ain’t because I work at Sun. Also, it has a funny ending.
He also mentions that he knows some smart, honest and ethical folks at MSFT: while I don’t doubt there are some, I would love for someone/some entity to poach as many of them as they could and set up shop with all that talent and none of the baggage.