The O'Reilly Open Source Conference is one of the premier events for hackers, executives, users, and industry analysts to share and discuss open source trends, strategies, and perspectives. It has been so successful for so long that Microsoft couldn't let it continue without becoming a top sponsor, which they have now been for a number of years. One thing that sponsorship buys is a keynote speaking slot, and Microsoft's Sam Ramji took that slot on the final day of the 2008 conference.

Sam's message to the audience, which included leading open source companies, open source project leaders, board members, venture capitalists, etc., is that Microsoft is truly, truly interested in playing nice with the open source community. Sam took a new approach, going so far as to ask the question of the entire audience what can Microsoft do for Open Source?.

It was a question that Sam also asked me personally, outside the keynote environment. And I told him I would answer him, personally, in a public blog posting, so that none could accuse me of any sort of conspiracy in my act of answering him. Several thousand people have now seen my answer, and yet there has been no word whatsoever from Microsoft nor Sam as to whether they want to address any one of the four responses I gave. Neither has there been any evidence that they have taken the first step in responding to any of the other responses generated by the audience who attended Sam's keynote at OSCON, such as providing a universal patent peace to open source developers, distributors, and users.

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