I wouldn't normally feed Rob Enderle, who has an anti-Linux agenda, but there is yet more of these speculations about a "Microsoft Linux". It's just one among many similar analyses that at least explore the idea, as far fetched as it may be.

Now, Microsoft could choose to drive this and fund a third party effort to create a Linux/Windows hybrid and have that third party bring it to market. Let’s say they funded it with Novell, for instance. Novell gets a product that is potentially (in terms of interoperating and running Windows applications) better than anything they currently have; Microsoft gains homes for Windows applications that probably wouldn’t run native under normal Suse Linux (virtualization aside). A blended license, given we seem to be doing that a lot with Open Source products, is a solvable problem and revenues are tied back to services and applications that run on the new platform.

As long as Microsoft retains control over the core code, which is likely since any unauthorized changes would either initially or eventually cause breakage, the end result is a low cost Linux/Windows hybrid that could be more attractive to a number of buyers than Linux currently is.

The writer does consulting work for Microsoft. Does he know something that we do not?