This month's announcement by Microsoft to acquire digital marketing services firm aQuantive has revealed little on how the companies will integrate their IT, but inside information indicates the deal may be Redmond's largest commitment to free software.

Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin says Microsoft's recent patent claim against Linux and the open source community is a furphy, alleging it is a delaying tactic to merely help protect its profits, according to a column penned last Friday in Business Week.

Novell plans to reveal the details in conjunction with filing its upcoming annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, spokesman Bruce Lowry said Wednesday at the Open Source Business Conference here. The report had been held up by Novell's investigation into its stock option compensation practices.

"So right after I post about what life would be like without open source, Microsoft announces plans to take on the free world. Am I a prophet or what? Just kidding. I’ve already told you why open source software isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I know folks within Microsoft's walls who get it—obviously none of them work in the legal department."

I just had a chat with BMC Software's William Hurley (aka whurley, a long time open-source advocate) about the latest moves by Microsoft, Adobe and Sun into open-source development. In the last two weeks, we've seen all three companies release code for their developers kits under open-source licenses: Adobe's Flex SDK under the GPL, Microsoft's Ajax toolkit and dynamic runtimes for .NET under the Ms-PL (a shared-source license) and Sun's new JavaFX Script, which the company plans to release under the GPL later this year.

I've suggested a few times that Microsoft could go beyond just cooperating with the open source community and actually ship open source code. For instance, Paint.NET is a great alternative to MS Paint, so not just bundle it? Tonight I had a very long conversation with someone who is in a position to really understand both Microsoft and open source. Now I understand why my suggestion - though well intentioned - was hopelessly naive.

The problem boils down to code pedigree, the nightmare scenario, and software patents.

Microsoft is expected to show a new friendliness to the open-source community by unveiling plans to release the source code to a part of its Silverlight technology at MIX 07 this week, according to sources familiar with the company's plans.

It takes Microsoft only 10 hours -- yes, 10 hours -- to match Red Hat's profits for an entire quarter. Stunning? Check out this exclusive analysis of Microsoft's latest financial results...