Good Post

I enjoyed your perspective on the Microsoft & PHP relationship. In a nutshell, Microsoft will do whatever is in the best interest of their company, just as most large profit based companies do. The part that they don't understand is that PHP is about community and helping other solve problems. Creating synergies between non-competing companies ending with everyone succeeding. No large software organization that is profit centric will ever understand this, unless they began that way from the start. The idea that people will code for free to help others is incompatible with Microsoft's mindset and in the end will cost them market share up until the point they become irreverent. Why would I use MsSQl over MySQL unless I am forced to? This is the approach they have always taken, force them to use the product, or create a broken patch, or even better sue the company that finds a backdoor that actually works. I would love to see Microsoft as I company to respect, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

Then generation x & y have very little respect for Microsoft leading to a large generation that would rather work open source equivalent systems. A company can not just spend money organizing a conference to get us to look their way, we need to see you will help us as much as we are willing to help you. Synergy is a two party interaction.

PHP is an awesome language that has a huge impact in the enterprise. I have never seen a language that can be as agile but yet simplistic. My hat goes off to everyone who helps it grow without limitations.

In the end I hope Microsoft will change the way they run their company and focus more on the common good, not just their self interest alone. This is what has made PHP & the open source community so successful and I would love to see Microsoft become a true partner in the community.

Yes, what I got is that there are many divisions in Microsoft, and the Open Source Labs division is trying to persuade other divisions to cooperate with Open Source projects in a way that is mutually beneficial. That does not mean that other divisions see the opportunity.

They realized that they cannot get Open Source people to work for them for free. That is why they hired Pierre Alain-Joye from PHP, Tom Hanrahan from OSDL/Linux foundation, Hank Janssen, and many others to tell Microsoft how to do things right, but always in a compatible way with their business.

So I think they will only do things in their self-interest. Actually if you see a company saying they are doing things to help the environment, be nice to the open source world, etc., rest assured they are doing that to benefit themselves first, even if that means they just want to improve their image before their customers.