"Former arch rivals Linspire and Microsoft have continued their recent rapprochement with a collaboration to improve interoperability between OpenOffice.org's Open Document Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Open XML."

Microsoft is embracing cancer to help ensure Windows survives server-room consolidation. The company has released 20,000 lines of Windows kernel code under version two of the GPL. Microsoft called the license it once hated "the community's preferred license". How things have changed.

The OSI License-Discuss mailing list has been ablaze for the past few days since Microsoft submitted its Permissive License (MS-PL) to the OSI [Open Source Initiative] for official open source license approval.

LINUX DISTRIBUTOR Linspire has shown what it is costing it to sign a deal with Microsoft over patents.

This morning a press release winged its way from Linspire which said the outfit was "joining the current efforts to improve the ability of OpenOffice.org users to work with the Office Open XML format by increasing the interoperability between ODF and Open XML".

Windows of opportunity, that is. No one can predict history, but when we look back to today, we may see through these windows more clearly. These are windows of opportunity for Linux -- windows, ironically, at Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) expense.

Looking back at 2007, who could have predicted that, after all the posturing by open source advocates, that the new version of the GNU General Public License would have caused so little division? Or that Linspire and Xandros would have followed Novell and made their own deals with Microsoft? Or that virtualization, which was such a hot topic in 2006, would have settled down to just another technology?

UPERTINO, Calif. (July 25, 2007) - SugarCRM Inc., the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced the upcoming release of Sugar Community Edition 5.0 will be licensed under the new Version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL is the most widely used free and open source (FOSS) license in the market.

Everyone in the Linux world remembers Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's famous comment that Linux is a "cancer" that threatened Microsoft's intellectual property. In 2010 Microsoft is trying hard not to be public enemy No. 1.

When Linspire 6.0 is released next month, it will include the fruits of the recently announced marriage between Linspire and Microsoft. Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony says he has been in talks with Microsoft for about a year and a half before reaching an agreement.