I don’t doubt Mr. Gutmann’s scholarship, nor his motives. The scenario he paints seems extreme. Extremely stupid. Now, I worked on Windows Media many years ago, and I can totally see a document like this coming out of that group. There were many good and smart people on that team, but they didn’t always have the best interests of the users at heart. Not on purpose, of course. They just didn’t understand users; at all.
Anyway, I decided to find Microsoft’s take on this message, and I was blown away by the fact that there wasn’t any. none. I mean, something like this surfaces and a week goes by with no response from Microsoft at all? I mean, a PM should be running around with his hair on fire, giving up his New Year’s Eve, putting together a coherent response for a press release or at least a blog post. The silence is as damning as the original article in my mind.