This is an interesting event which is taking place tomorrow in San Francisco and shows part of Microsoft’s strategy on Open Source. One of it’s aims is to get ISVs to develop their applications on Windows rather than Linux. The LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack is a very popular choice and Microsoft wants to convert this to WAMP (Windows, …, etc).

Sam Ramji, from the Microsoft Open Source Software Lab is presenting, and they’ve also got the CEO of SugarCRM. I’m guessing he’s going to be talking up building Open Source apps on Windows. His company is another good example of an Open Source company making money. They use a business model which has a zero cost Open Source version with a range of commercially licensed versions based on the Open Source solution with enhanced support services etc. SugarCRM has financing from Venture Capitalists, so you can see that serious people are willing to put money in to these business models.

You see, Microsoft and Open Source doesn’t need to be mutually exclusive and is a part of the positive stuff that is going on.