Information Week has published a fawning interview with Microsoft’s Bill Hilf (right), now general manager of Windows Server marketing and platform strategy, stating he was “revealing” the company’s open source strategy.

"Bill Hilf, Microsoft General Manager of Platform Strategy, announced two things last week at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference in Portland."

More analysis of InformationWeek's interview with Bill Hilf.

In a recent interview, Microsoft's Bill Hilf talked about the company's strategy for using and competing with open-source software.

"THE VOLE is submitting its Shared Source licences to the Open Souce Initiative for certification, as announced in a keynote speech by Bill Hilf, Microsoft General Manager of Platform Strategy, on July 26 at the OSCON Open Source Convention held last week in Portland, Oregon."

"I guess you saw the news about Microsoft submitting some licenses to OSI hoping for approval as "open source" licenses. You can watch Bill Hilf of Microsoft giving his talk at OSCON, which is where the stories emanated from."

I recently read an interview with Bill Hilf [1] (thanks to a link from Groklaw). As I read it, I realised that it needed clarifications to anybody left wondering whether Mr. Hilf’s answers are indeed objective. This article will go through the most interesting questions and answers, and will try to clarify some important points

Microsoft want to stop being seen as the big bad wolf and start celebrating their engagements with and support of various open source activities via a special website... and they are even submitting their shared source license to OSI for approval. Aw.

OK, so why have Novell, Xandros, and Linspire all gotten into bed with Microsoft? Is it...

1. They were seduced by Steve Ballmer's charming smile?
2. They've gone over to the dark side of the force?
3. Terror of Microsoft's mighty patent portfolio had them groveling at Microsoft's feet?