Whenever I write about Microsoft here I usually get a few comments asking me, with varying degrees of politeness, why I am wasting electrons on this subject on a site devoted to GNU/Linux. The reason I do this – and why I am about to do it again – is that whether we like it or not, Microsoft remains probably the single most important external factor in the free software world. It's useful, therefore, to try to understand what exactly the company's open source strategy is, in order to head off some of its worst aspects, and to build on any positive elements. The trouble is, I don't think Microsoft has an open source strategy any more.