Proprietary software champion Microsoft has reneged on an agreement to send its star Linux strategist to Sydney for the inaugural LinuxWorld Australia expo and conference next month. Not that Bill Hilf was likely to say anything that the market didn’t already know in his presentation.

Hilf, lead program manager for Microsoft’s platform strategy, organisation, was promised to the LinuxWorld organisers months in advance and had been billed as one of the star attractions. However, Microsoft, which has been strangely reticent in allowing Hilf to talk with the Australian media in recent months, pulled Hilf from the conference at virtually the last minute, citing travel plans that would keep him away from Australia.

Travel plans? One would have thought that travel plans made months in advance to attend a strategically important event such as LinuxWorld Australia would take precedence over plans made later. One interpretation of this behaviour is that Australia is after all a bit of a backwater in global terms, so if you’re going to let someone down at the last minute, you probably can’t do too much damage at an event in Sydney – especially if the event involves the Linux crowd.

Another interpretation of course is that Microsoft is afraid of letting Hilf, who drove IBM’s Linux technical strategy prior to joining Microsoft, loose on the media. We already know what his presentation is all about. He gave it to the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco last week. Hilf believes that the future for Microsoft with regard to open source is all about “coopetition”. “After all, their customers are also our customers,” he said at that event. So therefore, Microsoft’s Linux strategy is – well – learning to live with Linux. Sort of like they do with Apple and Sun – except that Java and Mac OS X aren’t open source, so the analogy is a croc.

That’s all very well, but from our reading of the reporting of that event, Hilf said exactly nothing about how Microsoft was going to keep making the exorbitant amounts of money it’s become accustomed to making by cooperating with Linux users. There may some services business there in helping its clients work within heterogenous Linux and Windows environment. However, one can’t imagine Microsoft, the consummate software sales company, selling too much of its high margin office and enterprise products into the Linux space.

So it is with this knowledge, we are told that Bill Hilf will not make the trip down under. Instead, his canned presentation will be delivered by the Australian platform strategy manager, Martin Gregory. Isn’t it strange, how four months ago when we requested an interview with Hilf, Microsoft told us he was far too busy and offered us Gregory instead? It is beginning to look increasingly like Microsoft does not want to let Hilf face the media. This in turn suggests that the world’s largest software company has no well articulated Linux or open source strategy. If it did, it would be jumping at every opportunity to push Bill Hilf to the forefront of the global software stage to get across its key messages.

As we write this article, it has been a week since we have requested another interview with either Hilf or at least another senior Linux strategist from Microsoft headquarters. We’ve tried going direct to Hilf and he told us that we would have to work through Australia. The software giant’s PR company in Australia keeps promising us that they’re close to finding us someone. We’re still waiting. Microsoft has already lost the battle for the internet to Google. Are we seeing the first signs of cracks in the dam in the desktop space?