--- title: "Stephen Walli’s blog" url: https://technologyvoices.com/blog/140/ description: "Stephen Walli writes for Technology Voices as VP, Open Source Development Strategy." published: 2026-04-30 updated: 2026-04-30 --- # Stephen Walli’s blog Published 2026-04-30 VP, Open Source Development Strategy, Optaris Stephen Walli is the Vice-president of Open Source Development Strategy for Optaros. Stephen is responsible for architecting and managing Optaros´ relationships with the open source community. Prior to joining Optaros, Stephen was an advocate for open source at Microsoft, where he was focused on “shared source” business strategies and was responsible for technical implementation of open source-related community projects (i.e., creating a business model at Microsoft to engage in the open source community). Stephen was a business development manager in the Windows Platform team, working in the space between community development, standards, and intellectual property concerns. Prior to Microsoft Stephen was the Vice-president of R&D and a founder at Softway Systems, Inc., a venture-backed startup that developed the Interix environment to re-host UNIX applications on Windows NT. Stephen has also worked as an independent consultant for X/Open, SunSoft, UNISYS, and the Canadian government. He was once a development manager at Mortice Kern Systems, and a systems analyst at Electronic Data Systems. Stephen was a long time participant and officer at the IEEE and ISO POSIX standards groups, representing both USENIX and EurOpen (E.U.U.G.) and has been a regular speaker and writer on open systems standards since 1991. Stephen was one of the essay writers for the most recent edition of O´Reilly´s Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution. ## Entries in the archive ### Advice to Microsoft Open Source Evangelist Candidates It would seem Microsoft is looking for an open source evangelist. A friend forwarded this Linux.com post to me. I took a stroll through the Microsoft careers site and couldn't find an actual posting to match. (If anyone has the job code, I'll happily post it here.) I did find a couple of marketing manager positions however to work on the teams continuing the "Get the Facts" campaign and the "Comme... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2007/01/01/) ### Open Standards, IPR and Innovation Conference, Beijing 2006 Enterprise Applications The China National Institute of Standardization and Sun Microsystems co-hosted a one day conference on Open Standards, IPR and Innovation in Beijing. I was an invited speaker. The event's goal was to bring together a set of speakers that would... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2006/11/05/) ### Oracle and Red Hat Redux Enterprise Applications I've been asked several times since arriving in Beijing what I think about Oracle's recently announced move to support Red Hat linux cheaper than Red Hat prices it. I've certainly been vocal in the past about Oracle and their possible... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2006/11/05/) ### Beijing Bound Enterprise Applications I am back to Beijing after an absence of almost four years. This time I will have a week to spend, with a standards conference anchoring the trip, but a little more sight seeing time and a number of meetings... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2006/11/05/) ### Gartner Open Source Summit Talk Enterprise Applications I was invited to speak at this year's Gartner Open Source Summit. This is the third open source event for Gartner, and it appeared to be well attended. As it's a Gartner event, it is focused on IT managers. Other... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2006/09/29/) ### Sun and Open Source Java versus the Microsoft .NET Efforts Enterprise Applications I attended the small event Sun hosted this evening to talk about the next steps towards an open source Java world. On hand for the discussion were Sun Software EVP Rich Green, VP of Developer Programs and Products Laurie Tolman... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2006/08/15/) ### Free and Open Source Software Development Education Materials (for Free!) Enterprise Applications I've been asked a few times over the past month for a set of references on free and open source software by people hoping to teach or learn about the concepts and mechanics of community development. They are not interested... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2006/08/05/) ### OSCON 2006: That's Billion with a "B" Enterprise Applications Matt Asay (Alfresco) and Stephen O'Grady (Red Monk) have been having a fascinating debate that began at OSCON last week over whether we will see a billion dollar pure open source play or not, if so when, and whether that's... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2006/08/03/) ### Time to Market with Open Source, and License Considerations Enterprise Applications Updated [12-Jun-2006]: Added some subheadings and a little editorial clean-up based on suggestions from friends. At the end of the USENIX panel, someone from the audience asked if one could use open source to provide a time to market advantage.... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2006/06/12/) ### Open Source Software Business Models at USENIX Enterprise Applications Updated [10-Jun-2006]: Added a link at the end to Brian Aker's blog commentary on the panel. Brian Aker (MySQL), Miguel de Icaza (Novell/Ximian), and Mike Olsen (Oracle/SleepyCat) joined me on a panel on open source software business models at the... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2006/06/07/) ### Microsoft continues to learn about Open Source: Wix is two years old! Enterprise Applications I was pretty hard on Microsoft with it's open source and standards messaging the other day, and deservedly so if we're talking about their public messages and actions. But in the background we continue to have great examples for Microsoft... [Read this day in the archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archive/2006/04/14/) [Back to the author index](https://technologyvoices.com/blogs/) · [Open the day-by-day archive](https://technologyvoices.com/archives/)