Well Microsoft is at it again. Trying to play footsie with the open source community on the one hand, with its announcement that it contributed code to the Linux Kernel (although the value of this is questionable , see below), and trying to enforce patents on the other.

Microsoft's Master Plan for Open Source Domination?

Of course this leads to all kind of speculation in the open source community. What is Microsoft up to? What is their evil master plan? Is this some clever strategy trap? The problem is that we, in the open source community, think Microsoft has a master plan. The fact is they don't. The reason we are seeing such inconsistent and irrational behaviour from Microsoft is that the company itself does not know how to respond to the growth in open source. Its different business untis are trying all kinds of strategies and they are hoping that one, or some, of the strategies work. Basically they are throwing everything at the problem and seeing what sticks. I have no doubt that as they find some strategies working, and other not, they will re-assess and abandon those that don't.

The key issue here is that Microsoft is confused. Instead of trying to figure out their evil designs, we should see it as an opportunity to push Microsoft to adopt strategies that are more beneficial to open source. I will be the first to admit that I do not know what that could be, but it will involve something along the lines of encouraging Microsoft to contribute positively to FOSS and fighting it where it trys to do things like enforce patents. What I am suggesting, is that we need to respond to Microsoft's moves in different ways, rather than just opposing everything they do in a knee-jerk reaction. Imporantly I don't think we shold waste time trying to figure out what they are up to and we shouldn't give them credit for having a master-plan when they don't.

"Beware of Greeks bearing gifts"

Microsoft Contributes 20 000 Lines of Code to the Linux Kernel - So What?

Reading the press release on this "amazingly generous act" on behalf of Microsoft one soon realises this is merely a marketing exercise.

"Microsoft released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community. The code, which includes three Linux device drivers, has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree. The drivers will be available to the Linux community and customers alike, and will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualised on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V."

 So basically they contributed code which makes it easier to run Linux  on top of a Windows Hypervisor. Its hard to see how else they could get these optimisation in Linux in any  other way  than by contributing them under the GPL to the Kernel. So this is no change of heart by Microsoft but rather an attempt to convince their customers to run Linx in Windows. I think I just  threw up a little in my mouth.