The vote is submitting its Shared Source licences to the Open Souce Initiative for certification, as announced in a keynote speech by Bill Hilf, Microsoft General Manager of Platform Strategy, on July 26 at the OSCON Open Source Convention held last week in Portland, Oregon.
This has been welcomed by some, including Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media that is the major sponsor of OSCON, and Matt Asay, among others, as a sign that Microsoft really does want to coexist and cooperate with Open Source software. However, the Vole's approach to OSI and Open Sauce in general deserves to be met with a shipload of skepticism.
Microsoft's overtures towards open source show just how scared it is.