1. Don't used closed formats for files. If they REALLY think their new Office format is better than OpenOffice's, then make it open. It's in their best long term interest anyway. Make NTFS open. Stop changing formats every time another program figures a way to write to it. Having interchangable formats is a way to be a good fellow citizen of the world, and to stop appearing like a bully.
2. Stop giving money to SCO and others who attack OpenSource products.
3. Play fair.

Why on Earth should they open up Sharepoint? Oh, don't get me wrong, I'd like to see a free version that would run on a Unix box, because I like the product and don't want to run Windows to run it, but why would they want to open it up? It's a feature of their platform, and something that draws sales of that platform. They'd be fools to release it to the wild.

The idea of them supporting Mono is a good one, and I believe one that's a major component of their relationship with Novell. Supporting Mono would give an avenue for a majority of their software to run entirely cross-platform, and given the popularity of C# (for good reason), there would finally be serious competition for Java. Wouldn't that be nice?

Im to lazy to comment on this blurb (it hasnt got enough meat to be considered an article). A general idea with a few opinions that arent explained.
Id give this a D.

Here is a post I glommed from Slashdot...

Linux not the threat; the GNU GPL is
(Score:2, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25, @05:50PM (#18876637)
Were the kernel Linux licensed under the BSD license, MS wouldn't consider Linux a threat. It's because of the *license* that the kernel Linux has that Microsoft is scared silly of it. That goes for anything else that's released under the GPL--Samba, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla/Firefox, KDE, *anything*. Why? Because they can't just lift GPL code without providing source. That's why their Services for UNIX is based on BSD, not GNU/Linux. It's also why Apple used a lot of FreeBSD code for the core of Mac OS X (the non-GUI parts).

Microsoft has made it clear, many times, that they consider the GPL a "cancer" and "Communist". They've also said that "we're not against 'open source'. We like BSD, that's fine. What we don't like is the GPL."

The GPL is their enemy because the GPL proactively defends our freedom. Is the BSD license a Free Software license? You bet! But it doesn't proactively defend our freedom like the GPL does, and it is that characteristic of the GPL that frightens Microsoft to its core. That's also why they're fighting so desperately against the OpenDocument file formats; to Microsoft, actual, true Freedom for users is a very, very scary thing.

Too bad I'm posting this after the event.
I think it will do a lot of good to Microsoft and the opensource community if Microsoft releases the entire windows98 source.

Within 18 months there will be a 'better win98' out of the community. And that will take care of the linux threat to some extent too.

What is ROI for MS?
In three years time, a robust version of 'win98' will be available with some of the trends of the time incorporated. This with some minor proprietory tweek can be plugged on to iPhone like devices that will be in vogue then.

Thanks Hugh of gapingvoid for the link.

-Balaji S.
blog: http://labsji.wordpress.com

You make a great point with most of your ideas, and I support most of them (especially opening up SharePoint). However, I feel that Microsoft would lose a lot of market share in the browser realm if they opened up IE. Given, this is far from the most important market, but we all know how addicted Microsoft is to dominance.

-SF
http://www.wasatchsoftware.com/blog