Quick! Think of some of the most popular open-source programs. I'll bet you thought of at least one of these: Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird and Apache. Now, name some of Microsoft's most active open-source projects.

Dead silence, except, perhaps the sound of a cricket in the distance?

"I headed in to town from the desert this afternoon to gas up and get groceries, and to catch up on all things ODF/OOXML. In scanning my Google Alerts, I ran into this posting by Microsoft's Jason Matusow, himself just in from vacation. In that post, Jason writes as follows."

Bill Gates has reportedly been making phone calls to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Commerce to push the American National Standards Institute to ignore the votes of its advisory committees and vote "yes" on ISO standardizing Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) format, the one in competition with the OpenDocument Format (ODF) pushed by IBM and Sun.

"It is nice to see the open source projects' progress in Microsoft world, especially it is been extremely fast growth after the Codeplex launched, and also GotDotNet suggests their hosted projects to move on to Codeplex. As you might remember, I have submitted a post about Codeplex a few weeks ago; Microsoft Open Source Projects. This time, it is proud to list most popular and active top 25 projects that has been hosted in Codeplex."

Windows Vista has probably created the single biggest opportunity for the Linux desktop to take market share, Cole Crawford, an IT strategist at Dell, said in an address titled, "The Linux Desktop—Fact, FUD or Fantasy?" at the annual LinuxWorld Conference & Expo here.

When does too much security become, well, too much? According to Steve Riley, senior security strategist at Microsoft, it becomes too much when the cost of mitigating the risk outweighs the cost of that which you are trying to protect.

"It's not that you shouldn't use Windows, it just that it's not always the most economical choice for your company. Here are seven surefire reasons to consider Linux, Unix or Mac alternatives."

Late today, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts announced that it has formally ratified the 4.0 version of its Enterprise Technical Reference Policy. As a result, Microsoft's Office Open XML format -- recently ratified by the ECMA standards body -- is now considered in equal stature with OASIS' OpenDocument Format, for use by state employees.