Former Microsoft Exec Joins Open Source Project

Looks like Nat Brown, one of the Microsoft employees involved in the famed Haloween Document, is now the CTO of CAC Media – a company that sells Open Source software and services. Two interesting quotes from Brown:
“There were a lot of us that talked about open-source casually in e-mail, and the memo synthesized a lot of those discussions,” he said. “My thought was that there's this beautiful thing with open-source where, as a developer, there's a very low barrier to entry. The flexibility that gives you is really incredible.”
“I'd been talking with Microsoft about going back to work on the Windows infrastructure. But the company is just very, very big, and the opportunity to have (an) impact and really execute on your ideas is very limited.”
It should be interesting to watch the direction that Brown, who helped shape Microsoft's initial response to Linux, will take CAC Media. One of their main products is software that creates a “device that does more than a TiVo-style video recorder but without the complexity and expense of a PC running Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center operating system.” I'm going to have to take a closer look at that. On an interesting side note, there may be some bad news coming tomorrow for TiVo fans – stay tuned.
–jeremy