It’s not hard to make the case that Sun Microsystems’ abject hatred of Microsoft has led it to make decisions designed more to beat the Redmond behemoth than benefit its own shareholders. It’s somewhat surprising, then, to hear Sun’s CIO, Jonathan Scwhartz, defend Microsoft as a company loaded with talented people who are working hard to create useful and innovative stuff. It’s on a podcast—the IT Conversations segment featuring The Gillmor Gang, that Schwartz (already Sun’s top blogger) makes his statements. The Gillmor Gang is always interesting—you can do a lot worse than listen to Doc Searls, Steve Gillmor and others talk about technology and marketing—but this one is particularly compelling.