Kit Kai recently had an "encounter" with the marketing force from the other side. The "other side" being a generic term for camps that are not Microsoft. He comments on the bemusement and FUD efforts on their part to curb down Microsoft and .NET, exposing their extreme ill-researched nature to the laughter of those who live the technology and the truth. While it might be indeed a little entertaining to see ignorant people swim their way into the mouths of sharks, from the Microsoft-practitioner angle, I will come forward and state, that Microsoft does the same thing in a good number of their talks. Not even Microsoft' CEO is spared this kind of shortfall.
The problem is not which technology camp you have affinity with. The problem is the corporate human desire to disbelieve somebody else can be better than you (your company), and you will do all sorts of things to convince yourself that you are ahead. And then, sell that picture to your customers. It is your business and livelihood that is under threat after all, and you must do what it takes to retain your revenue. Usually these types of efforts are fast and fault-finding, without a genuine concern about slowly researching for sure what is good and what is bad about your competitors. This is hampered given the fact that you are living and breathing your own technology, and since you are pouring in funds to improving your own, little time can be taken to seriously use and study other offerings in the market.
That is why I seldom engage into "A vs B" discussions and debates. Simply because I am spending a great deal of time learning the entire suite of Microsoft products and technologies, I have evaporating knowledge and experience with the other side. The last time I touched Linux and Apache was in 2002. Knowing how technology changes and improves over time, it is hard for me to base my opinions on the state of five years ago. Yet, I can assure you there are many people who cement their views with partiality based on experience with technology twenty years ago. All that I am truly engaged in, is the technical stuff; learning how to use technology to deliver as marvelous as possible a solution for other people. Sure, I have affinity with Microsoft for that job, but it is the underlying principle and not the technology. Those using Java or LAMP have got equal opportunities to deliver something beautiful. It is not the tools, it is how you use them.
And then again, I don't do sales.