>Take Michel's example: Montreal has only a very small MS presence in terms of staff (and square footage, I presume). Whether by accident or by design, that limited staff is now so focused on .NET that it simply doesn't have time to maintain the other practises and procedures that were in place for MS' other product lines. That's the polite version.
That resumes it pretty well. But, as you may have seen in another reply I made this morning, they are playing (at least here) against there own new technology. Which makes it completely unacceptable. The concept of communities goes way beyond a simple user group. There are related items that are being surrended by this community term. I'm sure some will jump in this thread and elaborate more on this topic.
>Now let's describe a possible version: MS needs to make .NET a huge success, as soon as possible. Accordingly, any product line that is not in the .NET family is to be de-emphasized, receiving only marginal attention, only when absolutely necessary.
It is clear some people, departments, offices have received some clear guidelines and have been put on a lot of pressure to deliver big as the investment can't take the risk to fail. As for "absolutely necessary", I really don't see what would fall in that area that we could do. Even the discussion of this thread, even if being brought at the upper level, won't change anything.
>Add to this one MS' creation of an evangelism department in Oct of 2001. That this could be a way to integrate communities right into MS' business plans cannot be dismissed. And there is only one community that REALLY matters - the .NET community, which hardly existed at the time. that there may be efforts underway to diminish OTHER communities seems very plausible to me. Many, even here, would call that a "good business decision".
...note here, that in some cases, the .NET community that MS is controlling. You could try to create something about .NET in Montreal. Let me know in a few weeks if it would succeed. Believe me, some persons are taking it quite serious in Montreal. For that, I'm saying it goes way too far.
