Microsoft was in violation of the GPL (General Public License) on the Hyper-V code it released to open source this week. After Redmond covered itself in glory by opening up the code, it now looks like it may have acted simply to head off any potentially embarrassing legal dispute over violation of the GPL. The rest was theater.

Late last week, Gray Knowlton wrote a lengthy blog comment, sharing some of this thoughts about my review of the Microsoft white paper "Accessibility of Ecma Office Open XML File Formats" that Gray posted to the OpenXML Developer website.

Microsoft dropped a mini-bombshell on Monday, announcing that it is contributing thousands of lines of code for inclusion in Linux. But lest anyone think Microsoft suffered a massive head trauma over the weekend, the code it is releasing isn't really about helping Linux compete better with Microsoft. The drivers are really geared at making Windows a better host for Linux.

This new multimedia browsing accessibility tool provides people with visual impairments a level of control more comparable to a sighted person using a mouse...Future plans for extending this technology include enabling flexible audio speed control and contributing this work to an open-source development project.

Talking with Microsoft officials last week, I was surprised to hear a key reason for the company getting involved with things like optimizing Windows for PHP: it was the only way to ensure products like PHP work with Microsoft technology at all.

In an historic move, Microsoft Monday submitted driver source code for inclusion in the Linux kernel under a GPLv2 license.

In an unforseen move Microsoft has announced the release of the Windows 95, 98, Me and MS-DOS source code for today only. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said that "by releasing the code for these operating systems we are allowing software developers worldwide to create better applications for these systems".

Microsoft has a job vacancy for a director of open source strategy - what does this mean for Microsoft, open-source and consumers?

One point was made to me repeatedly while covering the HIMSS show for ZDNet Healthcare this week. All this “good Microsoft” stuff about supporting open source, abut placing code on Codeplex, and about keeping open source projects “in the loop” regarding format changes, is no head fake.