At the Linux Collaboration Summit, held last week in San Francisco, an interesting panel discussion took place about Linux' position in the wider operating systems market. Included were Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation executive director, Ian Murdock, Sun community and developer vice president, and Sam Ramji, Microsoft platform strategy director.

Sam Ramji is a busy man. As Microsoft’s senior director of platform strategy, his job is a big one: overseeing the company’s initiatives in Linux and open source.

Microsoft must really love open source and want to see it succeed. Recently, Microsoft's open-source team lead, Sam Ramji, urged open-source vendors not to compete with Microsoft on price, but instead focus on "value."

At the Linux Collaboration Summit, Microsoft platform strategist Sam Ramji faced some tough questions during a panel about operating systems. He argued that Microsoft doesn't oppose open source software and that collaboration with the open source software community represents an opportunity for Microsoft.

At first glance, you might think the headline to this blog entry is an oxymoron. In reality, Microsoft certainly does have an open source chief (Sam Ramji). And in some cases, Microsoft is downright happy to support open source. Skeptical? Allow The VAR Guy to explain.

Microsoft's Patent Attorney Jim Markwith told the Open Source Business Conference that the reason they hadn't named the supposedly infringing patents was that it would be 'administratively impossible to keep up' with the list.

When Sam Ramji, Director of Platform Technology Strategy and the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft, describes his company's open source strategy, I believe him. Every word.

Last week, Mary Jo Foley offered commentary on Microsoft's open source software strategy with respect to independent software vendors based on an interview with Microsoft's Sam Ramji. Matt Asay provides good colour commentary on his blog. Each post focuses on the trustworthiness and competitive history of the company. Let's look at things from a different perspective.

Sam Ramji gave an excellent short talk at OSCON 2007 on Linux and Windows Interoperability: On the Metal and on the Wire. Sam described the collaborative work being done inside the Microsoft open source labs to better enable virtualization with the Xen world.