I love titling posts that–just in case anyone doesn’t notice when I get good and grumpy and up on a king-size soapbox.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time reading posts on Robert Scoble’s blog. He’s probably the most famous of the surprising number of Microsofties who blog about issues important to the company, and he has done a lot to help put a human face on what so many [read: including me] like to call the Evil Empire. This brouhaha is no exception to the rule that every time he says something controversial, other tech bloggers go “Whooo, he’s really gonna get fired now!” Let’s hope not. Because it’s bloggers like Scoble who may be the only chance for Microsoft to open up and truly interact with the world it has so much impact upon. He is a straight, white, married geek–but he has long been on the record as favoring gay marriage and gay rights. (Funny how the sheer number of gay people within Microsoft has helped make the place so tolerant… the very people whose marriages are being ruthlessly destroyed by homosexuals seem to have decided that gays are good people deserving of equality.)

Anyway, by the time I got done with it, I thought my comment on a recent post on his site was pretty good. So here it is, the first time I have ever block-quoted myself.

I think this “internal conversation” question is a silly fig leaf. Every. Single. Time. Bill or Steve ever sends out one of these “company-only” emails it is public within minutes. They are designed for this. I just think it’s really funny that blogging about one of these would be considered “airing dirty laundry.” It’s the Redmond equivalent of reading “…according to a senior Pentagon official…” in the NYT. Neither those officials, nor Steve’s PR team, are shocked (shocked!) when these get reprinted in major papers.

Beyond the transparent mechanics of such missives, it’s just reality that what happens within the walls of Microsoft has impact all around the world. Not to take anything away from the great work Robert has done or the risks he takes– but blogs have only made this more apparent, not more true. When you are the “world’s platform” there is not much chance of keeping things “in the family.” It’s a live/die by the sword kind of thing. Similarly, when you have led your corporate peers on an issue for over a decade and suddenly turn tail (presumably because the huge resources Microsoft was spending in support of equal rights lobbying was really eating into Building 18’s soft drink budget) you can’t expect your former friends not to feel like they have a right to speak up. Again, this happens every time Microsoft makes a business decision to stop supporting Protocol X, Widget Y or Standard Z. The community in question acts as if their hopes and dreams have been crushed.

Anyway, I have something of a ringside seat to Microsoft spin and I can tell you this mail raises more issues than it resolves. I’m very much waiting for the other shoe to drop. I summarize it on my blog as Your Rights, Our Silence. Not quite the warm, fuzzy or empowering message Microsoft spends millions to get out there.

This episode portends a crazy future for the once-proud company, a future in which the EU will hire Christian Evangelicals to threaten boycotts of Microsoft on the grounds that Jesus spoke out against anticompetitive business tactics in the Sermon on the Mount. I predict this tactic will be way more effective than anti-trust lawsuits.

There you have it– my theory on why future journalists will point to this whole episode as the beginning of the end, the point when Microsoft started losing credibility as a tough, take-no-prisoners company. Everyone thought it would be the lawyers that did it, but instead it turned out to be a preacher.