Microsoft's participation in OSCON was tackled by our team over a week ago, but a couple of important links on the subject ought to be added here as these are self explanatory:
Microsoft is more open — at least on the surface — and that’s all that matters in the cloud era, one company exec maintains.
One of the reasons I prefer the term Free Software instead of Open Source is the way mega corporations like Microsoft have diluted the meaning of Open Source to suit their agenda.
Now, Microsoft is coining yet another term to further confuse users -- Open Surface. Senior Director for Open Source Communities at Microsoft, Gianugo Rabellino, said at Oscon 2011 that "customer don't care about the underlying platform as long as the APIs, protocols and standards for the cloud are open." That's when he threw the term 'open surface'.