Last week at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), Microsoft and SpikeSource announced their intention to work together to certify a number of Open Source projects on the Microsoft Windows platform. According to the press release, Drupal is the first application that has been tested and certified for Microsoft Windows ...

Microsoft’s partners team through its NXT initiative launched a campaign focused on open source ISVs in 2007 in conjunction with the Open Source Business Conference. The campaign is designed to encourage ISVs to explore how best to deliver their solutions to customers in the Microsoft world, recognizing that many high profile open source projects have 30%-50% of their installed base in the Windows world. The Microsoft program works through partners to assist ISVs.

Priests and Nuns are into Linux and Open Source; that is what Fr. Stephen Cuyos said to me. Fr. Stephen is a Filipino missionary of the Sacred Heart priest, who blogs & podcasts about his faith and ministry, about the use of new technologies for evangelization, as well as his advocacy for Linux and the Open Source. To know more about this geek priest, you can visit his personal blog entitled, “Happy Faith”.

The IT systems used to support next year's Olympic Games in Beijing, China, will incorporate open source software, but the dominant platform will be Microsoft Windows, according to IT services vendor Atos Origin.

Microsoft recently tapped the Philippines for its open source initiative citing mobility applications and e-commerce as some of the potential open source areas, according to Bill Hiff, general manager for platform strategy of Microsoft Corporation. His visit in the country also marks the launch of Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative and Customer Platform Value Campaigns.

The Star Wreck Studios team, based in Tampere, Finland, has built a virtual studio for Iron Sky and an open-source platform that gives anybody the chance to make a film at no cost. They have recruited American Stephen Lee as managing director, and the chairman of the board is John Buckman, mostly known as the founder of Magnatune, a record label he created in Berkeley, Calif., in 2003.

So, Microsoft puts out its hand and offers help with porting open-source software, to make it run best on the Windows platform. How mean. Understandable from marketing and business point of view, but mean anyway (and hey, that's my opinion!).

In recent weeks I have banged on about Open Source, expending two articles on Firefox alone. Open Source applications make their code available to everyone. Disagreements and rabid balkanisation within the Open Source community aside, for our purposes the term might as well refer to free software whose licence allows you to share the source code, alter it, use it, do with it what you will.

Open sourcing Windows is more hassle than it's worth and Microsoft sees little gain in releasing code, according to the man leading Microsoft's server marketing and platform strategy.