Nearly a month later, a perceptive Usenetter noticed that the hardware of that setup matched exactly what Mindcraft had been using for its tests. And, most intriguingly to the conspiracy minded, the "message header" for the Usenet post from "Will" included information indicating that the message had been originally sent from a computer on Microsoft's internal network.

I sent "Will" an e-mail asking if the situation he had described in his Usenet post indeed referred to the Mindcraft test configuration. I also asked him why he had chosen not to identify himself.

The correspondent acknowledged that he was acting as an "intermediary" between Mindcraft and Usenet. As to his reluctance to come clean, he wrote:

"Any form of post comparing NT vs Linux, or by @mindcraft.com or @microsoft.com would have yielded nothing but flaming insults (I've seen it all too often). I've personally been running Linux for some time as well as NT, and regardless of my personal opinion, it is appallingly clear that Linux fans are deeply attached to their OS on an emotional level akin to Mac users. So much so that communications often degrade to mindless sarcasm and insults."

"Will" then noted that Mindcraft was in the process of "rerunning these tests (and others) with the direct aid and assistance (albeit remotely) of the top minds in the Linux community."

By consensus, the two "top minds" of the Linux community are Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox. Cox and Torvalds acknowledged that they had been in communication with Bruce Weiner, the president of Mindcraft, but both expressed dismay at the extent to which they were being allowed to participate.

"I've traded a couple of e-mails with Mindcraft people about this," says Alan Cox. "They seem solely intent on trying to re-create their existing pro-Microsoft results and hoping, by attaching some kind of 'Linux top mind' credibility to it, they can do more damage."

"The whole thing has been fairly painful," says Torvalds. "Mostly because these people don't actually let us know what the hell they are doing. We've been offering to be on site to see what the hell is going on, but so far they've refused."

"There isn't that much we can do -- they don't actually allow anybody access to the dang thing, so while they have e-mailed us about their problems, we can only tell them that the results they are seeing are extremely low, and we can only guess at the reason why," continues Torvalds. "Experiments on similar (but not the same) hardware has shown much better performance in other places."

"Will" refused to provide his full name or employer, although he denied that he is a Microsoft employee. He explained the issue of his mail originating from a Microsoft mail server by saying that he has "friends at Microsoft" who "owe me favors." One such favor, he said, was to host his machine -- which, he noted, runs Red Hat Linux.

Getting up-to-date information about Linux configuration issues for cutting-edge hardware is a serious issue for the Linux community. But even if Mindcraft had identified itself, right off the bat, to Usenet, or Red Hat, or Torvalds himself, it's not entirely clear that the community could have come up with answers that would have significantly improved Linux's performance.

Mindcraft did not return repeated phone calls and e-mail queries, but at least one source indicates that the company is tiny, perhaps no more than two or three employees. Mindcraft's business depends on satisfying customers like Microsoft who request specific numbers on specific hardware and software combinations. As one engineer familiar with the testing business notes, "The choice of what to test and which results to publish are always driven by the customer's interests ... There's plenty of money in performance testing, as long as it's possible to produce credible numbers that are favorable to the customer."

Credible or incredible? The numbers certainly are favorable. One wonders, though, whether the fallout from this episode will be exactly the opposite of what Microsoft might have wished. The Linux world is suddenly highly motivated to accomplish two new challenges -- centralizing access to "tuning information" and upgrading Linux performance on the kind of advanced hardware that hasn't been Linux's priority. Stay tuned.
salon.com | April 27, 1999

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