Whatever M$ has in mind, I know one thing, in the long run is not gonna be good for the open source and is gonna be very good for M$.
M$ is trying to do what they always did, cut the life support out of the competitors. They did it with Netscape, they did it with Apple (to a certain extent).
Sice Linux/GNU has no revenue M$ has been disoriented for a while trying to figure out a way to get the Open Source community, they found one (or so they think) and now they are acting according their plan.
What scare M$ the most is not Linux but is the GPL.
Ballmer defined the GPL a "cancer", and from their "close" pointy of view it is, and a big one.
Linux is a product and they can deal with it the same way they dealt with every other product in competition with theirs, leveraging their market power and their almost unlimited resources to minimize its market impact (for analogy: Apple, other non-M$ Office products etc..).
GPL, on the other hand, is a license, a genius form of license that uses the Copyright laws against themselves. GPL can be applied to every piece of software developed in every OSs, M$'s included.
In a non-distant future we could see a Window$ killer app (the next Office?) under the GPL, with the source code available to anybody, this thought scare the hell ot of Ballmer and Gates. M$ would not have any control over it.
Let’s not forget that a big chunk (close to 60% if I remember well) of M$’s revenue is derived by Office and other software, not the OS.
.Net is clearly a way to minimize the impact of GPL.
Will they succeed? I don't know but I'm not going to underestimate them.
Ciao
Federico
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