This is in many ways the hardest to parse. From the
FAQ:
We believe that commercial software companies and the developers that work for them under-participate in open source projects. Some of the reasons are cultural, some have to do with differing software development methodologies, and some have to do with differing views about intellectual property. In general, we are going to work to close these gaps. Specifically we aim to work with particular projects that can serve as best practice exemplars of how commercial software companies and open source communities can effectively collaborate.
That sounds laudable enough – increasing participation in open source projects. But then we have this in the same document:
The Foundation has no pre-suppositions about particular projects, platforms, or open source licenses . Particulars about the relationship between the Foundation and projects will be spelled out as the Foundation Charter is drafted, but our expectation is that we can have the greatest impact on projects where the software industry as a whole would benefit from closer collaboration between software companies and open source communities.
That phrase “software industry as a whole” seems to stand in contradistinction to things like “open source community”: in other words, the emphasis will be on commercial concerns, not ones to do with the community (never mind freedom). I also find the following worrying:
Microsoft has an evolving engagement with open source, as demonstrated by its sponsorship of the Apache Software Foundation, contributions to the PHP Community, participation in Apache projects including the Hadoop project and the Qpid project, and participation in various community events such as OSCON, EclipseCon, PyCon, and the Moodle Conference. As an additional proof point of Microsoft's understanding that they needed to be more involved, at OSCON 2009 in July, Microsoft contributed 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux kernel. The Codeplex Foundation is another step in this evolution.
It's true that these are all demonstrations of “Microsoft's engagement with open source”, but they are also fine examples of how Microsoft is encouraging the open source community to expend time and energy on projects that benefit Microsoft – for example, by working on Windows versions of code. I can't help feeling that the CodePlex Foundation will similarly focus on bending open source to Microsoft's advantage.