My reading was that this was personal opinion of a researcher, it seems like you are reading the deficiencies you note as intentional omissions whereas I am reading them as simple flaws.
Does it change your perspective that this was aimed at a private audience? To me it came off as a blanket admission that they were not doing the right thing and needed to do something different to be successful. That may be the core difference, I read it as blame accepting whereas you read it as blame deflecting.
>Does it change your perspective that this was aimed at a private audience?
Was it? Someone leaked the article to the press. Per the article, someone granted permission to publish the leak. I'm assuming that someone had standing to give said permission, either from Google Research or being the author. I can see a scenario when someone intentionally 'leaks' in order to put something in the public sphere without attribution. Perhaps I'm too uncharitable or too cynical.
Still, I find the underlying argument too simplistic.
At $WORK, we have some $SOFTWARE that certain $CLIENTS run on Windows Server. It would be cheaper if they ran it on Linux. I have good confidence it would work the same, and we could test with the typical deployment patterns. The typical $CLIENT attitude is to not even think about this ("We don't have anyone to manage a Linux deployment, and $$client of $CLIENT wouldn't even hear of Linux, we barely got a current deployment plan approved").
Arguing that Open Source Linux could do everything that Windows Server can or that Linux development speed is higher wouldn't do anything to change their mind - it's based on other factors, and even if we finally got past that there would be ROI to consider (compared to other things that could be done in the same time).
My reading was that this was personal opinion of a researcher, it seems like you are reading the deficiencies you note as intentional omissions whereas I am reading them as simple flaws.
Does it change your perspective that this was aimed at a private audience? To me it came off as a blanket admission that they were not doing the right thing and needed to do something different to be successful. That may be the core difference, I read it as blame accepting whereas you read it as blame deflecting.