I was sitting with a Microsoft PR lady over dinner yesterday and I commented how sad Microsoft has alienated the Open Source community. I mean, it is one thing for Microsoft would see Linux as a competitor and react strongly towards it as they would against any other competitors, it is another to go against the ‘Open Source Movement’.

The result of this alienation is that Microsoft has not done much to encourage OSS developers to build OSS Windows applications which of course, resulted in less OSS apps developed for Windows. Yes, I am aware of the numerous OSS applications that runs on Windows but comparatively, given Windows has >90% of the desktop market share, I would expect the numbers to be much higher.

They are making the same mistake Apple did when they alienate Mac developers. Like it or not, OSS is here to stay and when there are more applications that runs on Linux then Windows, guess what the customer would run?