Rick Jelliffe of the O’Reilly XML Blog wrote about an email he received, “from Microsoft saying they wanted to contract someone independent but friendly (me) for a couple of days to provide more balance on Wikipedia concerning ODF/OOXML.” Jelliffe starts the post by establishing his cred as an open-source, standard formats guy – inventorying the computers he’s used over the years (Mac, UnixPC, Linux, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc., and only one Windows laptop he received as a gift), and chronicling his affiliations with open source projects.

So is this unethical? As blog commenter Fred Arnold wrote, “Microsoft is not some poor oppressed underdog that needs you to ride to the rescue.” Microsoft is quite the opposite, and has been taken to court by both the EU and US over its sometimes strong behavior to stifle competitors. I’m uneasy about this. When someone is paid to do this, they’re going to be less partisan than if they were doing it independently. I’d be upset if any company did this, but I’m inclined to be even more so since it’s Microsoft. One could argue that a company with a $302.2B market capitalization should be able to use its wealth in ways that don’t open it up to ethical scrutiny. Now when I hear people criticizing Wikipedia for being prone to inaccuracy, I may feel compelled to point out that the uneasiness over that might be directed at those who pay to have positive things written about them. In the long run, I think this hurts Microsoft because it erases any credibility they might build through more transparent communication, such as when Robert Scoble was blogging for the company.