Microsoft has just approached the Blender guys, and I would assume have or will approach other FOSS projects since we learn that Microsoft has assigned a guy to work with Open Source projects, with a request for information on how to make Blender run better on Windows. Here's part of what Microsoft emailed to Blender

I have been making posters for many events now. Making a foss poster is a simple task. If you are one of those persons who like to decorate your desktop then you have got the knack already. The poster usually have a standard A3 size. The main thing about the poster is it should have something to draw people. So the first you have to choose a background. Browse through flickr and find some photos that denotes freedom, sharing etc.

LIKE HIM or hate him, the man is considered influential and his words on Microsoft as of late have not been particularly encouraging. He has already moved some computer/s of his to GNU/Linux, which impressed him. Now he opines that Google, a "Linux poster child" in some people's eyes, may replace Microsoft.

One by one, free and open source software providers are signing agreements with “the dark side”, the poster child for proprietary software, and (many say) the antithesis of open source: Microsoft.

For years, the poster child of the anti-open source movement was Microsoft, with its proprietary software model. In recent years, however, the company has changed its views, starting an open source software lab to work on interoperability issues.

FOSS gets "extended" by Microsoft to make it hook up with Microsoft's software that harms FOSS

Once the traditional anti-open source poster child, Microsoft is slowly seeing this aura eroding replaced as a direct consequence of the rise of new, more pressing, rivals such as Google and Apple.

Free and open source software (FOSS) advocates need to stop obsessing about Microsoft. But, just as clearly, many of them won't, if the reactions I received when I blogged about the subject are any indication.

No user of free and open source software (FOSS) can escape having an opinion about Microsoft. Microsoft products and technologies represent what FOSS users have left behind. Some consider it increasingly irrelevant, and others a shadowy figure comparable to Satan in the Middle Ages or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.