Interesting article talking about a potential direction for Microsoft, and an explanation of what's going on:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8764
Myself, I'm sure there's a strategy in here that's going to screw us all in the long run. Microsoft is, well, Microsoft. They have a longer plan here, and it DOESN'T involve them just turning Windows over to the open source community to maintain, EVER.
If they are doing this, it's part of their 'embrace, extend, extinguish' strategy.
I expect the author is right to the extent that Microsoft will end up with Windows being an interface to the linux kernel. That's fine. That allows Microsoft to focus on where they make money, THE UI. No-one gives a flying squirrel if the underlying filesystem calls go to a linux kernel, a Mach kernel, an OS/2 kernel, or an NT kernel. As long as it behaves as expected, it DOESN"T MATTER.
What they CARE about is the UI. Does it behave in a way they expect, and are used to? Can they run the applications on it that they need to use in order to get their work done?
What I see happening here is that Microsoft is going to get people used to using Microsoft tools and apps on Linux, and will gradually replace Gnome with Windows, and we'll right back where we started.
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