Microsoft and OpenBSD

Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft does not have a problem with open source software.
 
IIRC free and open MONO was approved by Balmer, right?

Nice PR stunts makes no difference. Anyway, developing something like OpenSSH is more expensive than that donation.
 
To my knowledge Mono has never been officially accepted or approved but Microsoft has stated through (semi?) official channels that they won't go after the project in a legal way. Quite frankly I think that they'll commit reputation suicide if they decided to go after it. Although people who use Mono are usually not doing that on a licensed Microsoft platform, in the end they're still using a Microsoft technology, which also accounts for something.

Anyway, as to Microsoft and Open Source Software, maybe also a fun thing to know: a few years ago Microsoft actually sat in the top 20 of most active contributors to the Linux kernel. So, not contributing money but actual code updates.

Obviously they followed their own agenda, to my knowledge most work was done with Samba and Microsoft Servers in mind, but even so the fact still stands.
 
ShelLuser said:
To my knowledge Mono has never been officially accepted or approved but Microsoft has stated through (semi?) official channels that they won't go after the project in a legal way.
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It's complicated. Mono was developed in large part by Novell, who've had mixed dealings with Microsoft in the last decade. You may recall Novell found itself between Microsoft's rock and the FOSS community's hard place some years ago, when Microsoft did indeed vaguely threaten legal action against several parties; Novell were the only ones to cave, paying Microsoft to gain the latter's partial imprimatur for Mono. Meanwhile, Novell was pursuing an antitrust suit dating back to the '90s regarding Word and WordPerfect, which Novell lost once and for all last year. Novell used to develop OpenSuSE, but SuSE is now an independent operation, and Microsoft does contribute both money and consultation to them.

People still like view Microsoft as the Big Bad it was back in the '90s and early 2000s. I don't care much for them myself. But let's face facts: is it more likely that Microsoft has some nefarious scheme to conquer every software platform through perfidy and subterfuge; or that Microsoft is reacting to a marketplace in which its relevance has substantially dwindled in the last decade or so? The latter seems the case to me. Since Windows Vista, their dominance has relied entirely on cultural inertia--most people by a new computer and just leave Windows there because it's there, not because it's the best. Considering the fact that a more tech-savvy generation has come of age, five of the last eight Windows releases have been more or less despised, Windows has virtually no grip in the mobile and server markets, and more and more computing is happening "in the cloud" (ugh), Microsoft needs some way to stay relevant. In all those cases listed, FOSS plays a major role. It's natural for Microsoft to want in on that.
 
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