They were also a major sponsor of OSCON, above, e.g., Google and Sun. http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/content/home
WTF?
WTF?
Now if they could hire away the key Apache developers, they would in a heartbeat. They did it to Borland in the 90's. That's why Ballmer was tossing around chairs, b/c he saw Google using the very same strategy against him.
At the end of the day Money talks!
Indeed, and with huge consequences. Borland withered up and died (or the statistical equivalent), and MS got Heijlsberg who went on to make some of the few things they have that don't suck.