ANOTHER one leaves the nest (joining many others). What makes him rather unique is that he played along with the Microsoft plot to appease Free software supporters by pretending to be a friend while the company attacked with patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], even sued (TomTom and Melco for example).
Microsoft New Zealand national technology officer Brett Roberts - one of the software giant’s most senior staff - has announced his resignation, sneaking in ahead of an official company announcement.
[...]
Mr Roberts has often served as Microsoft’s public face in controversial arenas, such as the ongoing debate about Linux and open source software - and has been a frequent visitor to the capital for discussions with government departments, and others.
Garkusha is an emissary from Microsoft Corp.'s Canadian arm whose job is to convince open-source software disciples that his company is not the evil empire it appears to be.
[...]
It'll be a tough seduction. Open-source advocates are still on guard after a series of internal memos leaked in 1998 suggested Microsoft wanted to infiltrate and destroy the open-source threat. Known as the Halloween Documents, the memos detailed an "embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy to make Microsoft interoperable with open source, then slowly make itself the standard everyone has to pay for.
Microsoft responded that the memos were simply one engineer's musings and were not an official company statement.
--Bradley M. Kuhn (SFLC) in response to the TomTom lawsuit