According to a reader, Slashdot has bit a little out of control recently (also see this). Upon closer inspection, particularly in comparison to past days, the site is no longer dominated by its original crowd that was pro-FOSS. It's a pattern, not just a single observation. Consider this latest vapourware/slashvertisement from Slashdot:

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, said on Friday(23 February) that they are aiming to restore a Unix-like environment to its former propriety glory, at the same time, proving that Microsoft is committed to interoperability. Ballmer emphasized that Microsoft's new strategy is to provide users with a complete package, and this includes users who like Unix environments. According to the supposedly leaked email, UNG, which stands for UNG's not GNU is set to be released late 2009.

Given Microsoft's ill state, there's a lot of steam going on here, but little or no beef. In short, Microsoft wants to strip the GPL off of GNU utilities. There's even emacs.NET in the works (reportedly).

The tagging usually gives away the editors' inclinations and there are also decent sarcastic comments such as this one. [thanks to a reader for the heasdup]

Re: Microsoft Trying to Appeal to the Unix Crowd?

More like Yellow sno cones, being sold as lemon-aide.

Eskimo: Hey! This doesn't smell right!

Microsoft: Trust us, it's an improved lemon flavor.

Generally, for more information about known corporate involvement on the Web, see the links above and consider some actual proof.

The less fortunate thing to find out about is separate. The invitation to Apache developers was eventually accepted.

Don't mention the Apache trip

[...]

Microsoft's faltering attempt to counter LAMP came, ironically, as it emerged that the company is courting another component in the open source acronym stack. Members of Apache visited the Microsoft campus with a view to improving Tomcat's support for Internet Information Services (IIS). Previously, Microsoft has entertained MySQL and Zend and worked with Novell.

It ought to be clear by now that Microsoft just wants to turn LAMP into W(indows)AMP and treat FOSS (taxable is how Microsoft views it) as part of the Microsoft ecosystems. It's important to understand Microsoft's motives because all that so-called 'opening' is self-serving and it's little more than an attack on Linux. It is also an attack on the freedom of software ('distributability') ⬆