Posted 01/06/2009 at 07:17:31pm

Microsoft is a business, and therefore, like any business, it's purpose is to generate as large of a profit as possible by providing what people want.  Open source software is slowly but surely taking customers away from Microsoft by providing what many people want for free.  Microsoft's movement to open source, which gets people to develop some of it's software for free is potentially cutting costs of producing that software.  This helps to keep their profits up.