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Comment by onli | Hacker News Reader

It's not the case. But organizations as big as Microsoft are often paralyzed by lawyers.

I vividly remember the meeting I went to in 2003 with a bunch of Microsoft bloggers and lawyers -- it was one of the few times Raymond Chen and I were in the same room. :-)

It was astonishing because of what the lawyers said: yes, it is a public relations risk to have ordinary employees communicating directly with the developer community, and we are willing to take on that risk if it dramatically improves our satisfaction metrics in the developer community.

We were basically told "don't be stupid, don't share corporate secrets, comport yourselves professionally, keep it on-topic, and if there are legal problems, legal will handle them appropriately".

I don't know that things would be the same today; it was a different time. But I'd hope so.

That's pretty great :) I mean, of course there are situations where legal is right and there are situations where a risk is taken because it's worth it, like in that situation. The newegg anti-patent-troll stance comes to mind as well. But being overly risk averse and having lawyers drive the company happens as well, and it might have happened with the comments here.

That's pretty cool. Imo, I think it really paid off and I'm thankful to get the kind of insight into Microsoft that these bloggers managed to give. I think it humanized Microsoft and their developers for a lot of people (including me).

Their own lawyers, but also the ones that are itching for a big juicy target to sue.

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