Microsoft has used its patents, just as IBM did, to bully its way into the space, it has created open source licenses the suit its needs, and it can use open source as a glue to hold customers to its products with their cash flow. It can now afford to be magnanimous.
Once more we have to explain to our fellow typists the difference between open source and FOSS. Open source is a practical means for doing business. FOSS is an ideal.
Open source does not mean you wear a hair shirt and abjure filthy lucre — just the opposite. (As if FOSS ever did. There are far more long-haired rednecks out there with Bush-Cheney 2004 stickers on their trucks than hippies. This is 2010.)
Of course just because Microsoft loves open source that doesn't mean it does what the open source movement wants it to do as opposed to what Microsoft wants to do. Microsoft loves open source because it has found a way to twist it in the direction of its own self-interest.
It is also in Microsoft's self-interest to appear benign toward open source right now. Oracle has gleefully taken up the mantle of open source villain, and Microsoft's new public stance may help it take some business away from its rival.
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