Much of the reader feedback to "Why Windows Must Go Open Source" is saying, "No way." But part of my hypothesis is the fact that Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) as a developer culture is much less averse to such a move than Microsoft as a business culture. Consider the Windows Template Library, code that's now part of Google's browser, Chrome.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer may have stolen a little thunder from Apple's rumored announcement of a slate PC during his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, but three leading analysts say that the real thunder theft at this year's show is coming from Microsoft's mobile competitors.

It's not every day that a Microsoft executive as highly placed as senior vice president, corporate secretary and general counsel Brad Smith shows up at an open source conference, but he made an appearance at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco this week. I enjoyed the title of InfoWorld's summary of his visit: Microsot's Brad Smith Tries to Make Nice with Open Source Community.

Microsoft is determined to be a leader of the open source movement. It will once again be a “platinum sponsor” at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco next month and its National Technology Officer for the U.S., Stuart McKee, will deliver a keynote.

Could Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) take its cash reserves and buy an open source company? Why not?

When the Open Source Business Conference starts March 17 in San Francisco, The VAR Guy will be watching and listening closely for signs of corporate open source momentum from upstarts like Canonical and giants like Microsoft, Oracle and even SAP. Yes, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Here are five trends to anticipate at the OSBC conference.

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) said Friday that it has joined a group that's developing a standard for open source messaging software known as the Advanced Messaging and Queuing Protocol (AMQP).

When Microsoft completed its acquisition of San Francisco-based startup Powerset in July, it acquired more than just search-engine technology. In the HBase component of Powerset's product, Microsoft also acquired open-source code that is actively being redistributed back into the Apache Software Foundation's Hadoop project.

For months, I've been trying to get Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) to answer a few questions about the Unix technologies in its intellectual property portfolio. Microsoft agreed to an interview, then backed out. So the question remains: How much Unix code does Microsoft have its hands on?