[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“From Microsoft’s point of view, the most galling thing about
open source is the appeal it has for developers. In order to spread
the popularity of its single platform proprietary technologies
among developers it has to retain and extend the appeal of
technologies such as .NET and the proprietary languages it
uses–and this means catching the imagination of developers, and
locking them in to Microsoft technologies. This is the attraction
of open source to Microsoft. Each of the ‘shared source’
technologies it has sponsored is locked into its proprietary
version of userland. This inevitably limits its appeal to open
source developers. Nevertheless, it is taking an adventurous
approach towards the newer programming languages and is being
pragmatic in its approach to developer communities, in the hope
that by submitting its licences for approval it will gain an aura
of respectability among a larger community who will take their
expertise onto .NET and Windows in the workplace…'”