What people don't get is that eventually these big companies with their large resources will start to dictate the direction of the open source community since they have the resources to contribute lots of source code. Generally speaking this would be good but when one large company does it they do it in self interest. We have seen it with Google and the internet. Right now, Google dictates a large part of where the internet as a whole is headed. If Google wants it then it gets done and a large percent of the time others just follow.

I think this is where we are headed with Microsoft and Linux. In time Linux will be Microsoft and Microsoft will be Linux. The problem is that companies don't do things out of the goodness of their heart. It's all done in self interest. In time Microsoft will dictate where Linux is headed and that will be a loss for technical innovation but it will be a boom to Microsoft.