I was at work last night and I noticed that lots of people are working late on some stuff you will hear about later in the day.

You don’t see these folks. People like Robert Coleridge. He’s a software design engineer. He doesn’t seek the limelight. You won’t read about him on Mini-Microsoft. He doesn’t blog. He’s never been on Channel 9. He didn’t come and ask me to talk about him. But he’s one of those guys who does stuff developers use. Yesterday I learned he developed the SOAP Toolkit and has been doing Web services and more for years.

It’s unfair that you know my name but you don’t know his. There are 60,000 inequities like that at Microsoft.

In our blog book I realized I had written out at least four people at Microsoft who made a huge contribution to Channel 9 (and actually dozens of others). Does Jen Schwartz or Robin Para, the ones who help me with my videos over at Microsoft studios get any credit? No. Does Jeff Sandquist, the guy who pushed the project forward get any credit? No. Does Charles Torre and Bryn Waibel get any credit for writing the code? No. Does Adam Kinney get any credit for helping out the past few months on the code and the design? No. Does Sanjay Parthasarathy, the guy who funded it (or Eric Rudder) get any credit? No. Does Steve Ballmer, the guy who told us to tell Microsoft’s story get any credit? No. But you know my name.

Stuff like this keeps me up at night. Why? Cause it’s important. It’s why I almost never appear on Channel 9 videos. I don’t do the work at Microsoft and I greatly value those who do.

Oh, while we’re thinking of this, Nordquist asks whether I’d be interesting if I didn’t work at Microsoft. I used to say “of course I would be.” And there’s some truth to that. I had thousands of readers before I joined Microsoft. But, it’s clear that being at Microsoft gives me access to things that I simply wouldn’t have access to before. I can go hang out with Coleridge while he builds new stuff and I get to go to sexy Web 2.0 conferences around the world like the LIFT conference in Switzerland where I’m speaking in February. So, I certainly wouldn’t be AS interesting. There is no company in the world that is doing as much geek work as Microsoft is.

Anyway, just some random stuff I’m thinking about at 3:02 a.m.

SocialText’s founder, Ross Mayfield, nails why a bunch of my friends don’t trust Microsoft and are finding what Microsoft’s Web offerings quite boring (or, even worse, worthy of derision).

As I’ve been going around the world I’ve been meeting with many people who’ve built their companies on non-Microsoft stuff. Some of whom have companies worth billions of dollars now. Some of whom you’ve never heard about unless you read TechCrunch. Here’s 12 reasons Web 2.0 entrepreneurs like Ross tell me that they aren’t using Microsoft’s stuff:

1) Startup costs. Linux is free. Ruby on Rails is free. MySQL is free.
2) Performance per dollar. They perceive that a Linux server running Apache has more performance than IIS running .NET.
3) Finding tech staff is easier. There are a whole new raft of young, highly skilled people willing to work long hours at startups who can build sites using Ruby on Rails.
4) Perception of scalability. The geeks who run these new businesses perceive that they can scale up their data centers with Linux and not with Windows (the old “Google runs on Linux” argument).
5) That Microsoft doesn’t care about small businesses. After all, Microsoft is an evil borg, but Ruby on Rails comes from a single guy: David Heinemeier Hansson. He has a blog and answers questions fast.
6) That open source makes it easier to fix problems and/or build custom solutions. A variant of the old “Google or Amazon couldn’t be built on Windows” argument.
7) On clients, they want to choose the highest-reach platforms. That doesn’t mean a Windows app. Or even an app that runs only in IE. It must run on every variant of Linux and Macintosh too.
8) They don’t want to take shit from their friends (or, even, their Venture Capitalist). Most of this is just pure cost-control. I can hear the conversation now: “OK, you wanna go with Windows as your platform, but is the extra feature worth the licensing fees for Windows?”
9) No lockin. These new businesses don’t want to be locked into a specific vendor’s problems, er products. Why? Because that way they can’t shop for the best price among tools (or move to something else if the architecture changes).
10) More security. The new businesses perceive Linux, Apache, Firefox, and other open source stuff to have higher security than stuff built on Windows.
11) More agility. I’ve had entrepreneurs tell me they need to be able to buy a server and have it totally up and running in less than 30 minutes and that they say that Linux is better at that.
12) The working set is smaller. Because Linux can be stripped down, the entrepreneurs are telling me that they can make their server-side stuff run faster and with less memory usage.

Now, why am I telling you this stuff? After all, I’ve just given you a list of perceived competitive advantages for Linux, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, and others. Isn’t this yet another example of why Scoble should be fired for being negative on his own company?

No.

See, I don’t want uninformed customers. That doesn’t help me. It doesn’t help Microsoft. It doesn’t help the customers. I want you to ask your Microsoft salesperson the tough questions before you buy into any of our new Web stuff. And, I start with the presumption my readers are smart enough to use Google or MSN or Yahoo to find out this information anyway. If you don’t get the right answers from Microsoft when it comes time to consider new Web technologies/methodologies/tools, er, if we don’t answer these points above, then I want you to run to the competition (and I’ll help you go there, just like I did when I helped run a camera store in the 1980s). And, when we bring services out, or bring new Web strategies out, I want you to trust us because we treated you right and gave you all the information.

Thanks Ross, though, for bringing your distrust out into the open. That’s helpful cause at least we can work on it now. And deal with it openly, without FUD, is what we’re going to do. Or, we’re going to be fired. That’s my cautionary tale to everyone inside Microsoft. Pay attention to this stuff or you’ll find yourself working somewhere else cause the customers went somewhere else.

What do you think? Did I miss anything in my list of 12?

One little sentence, by Venture Capitalist Rick Segal, explains just why corporate blogging is so powerful: “having one of the designers tell me what they fixed, what didn’t get added, etc, tends to make the relationship I have with the product and by extension the people who made it, personal.”