"For those who wish to know the gory details, here is a quick way to get them. These eight points are part of a petition circulated by the organization OOXML..."

I recently took a look at Microsoft's most active open-source projects and—there's no polite way to say this—they are all junk.

Bill Gates has reportedly been making phone calls to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Commerce to push the American National Standards Institute to ignore the votes of its advisory committees and vote "yes" on ISO standardizing Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) format, the one in competition with the OpenDocument Format (ODF) pushed by IBM and Sun.

one could argue that Microsoft – once blessed with the open source label – will only abuse its status. The company could claim to be a huge open source supporter, derailing critics' arguments by displaying nothing more than the OSI logo when needed.

Chris DiBona, Google's open source manager, seems to fall into this cynical camp.

In this interview, Microsoft India Chairman talks about Software Piracy (we call that sharing) in India and why it's bad, why "Intellectual Property Rights" are important. The contrast in thoughts of the Free Software community about the same issues is particularly interesting to note.

I really, really don't understand this. I understand that Microsoft has a history of aggression against open source, as Chris DiBona wrote recently on the Open Source Initiative's (OSI) license-discuss e-mail list. I compete with Microsoft and have for many years. I get that Microsoft has been bad.

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner outlines the challenges the company faces, including Linux and competition with the Xbox.

A regular reader of this site, MattD, has taken a look at Novell’s FAQ about the Microsoft deal. His analysis is worth extra attention. The FAQ is by no means new, but knowing what we know 9 months later, the intents are transparent.