Will open source force a sea change in IT? - Tech Update - ZDNet Microsoft could do one of three things. It could attempt to enforce its intellectual property rights by preventing Ximian from distributing Mono. Or it could demand royalties from Ximian. The third option, and the long shot that I would bet on, is that Microsoft will acquire Ximian. Eventually, Microsoft might recognize that, from a market share perspective , the benefits of a Linux-based version of .Net outweigh the risks it presents to the Windows franchise. After all, the action (the revenue) is where the developers are at, and the industry-wide emphasis on service-oriented architectures has pushed developers to the application server layer.

Comment: Hey! By buying Ximian MS would annoy basically the whole OSS ecosystem, and would kill right off Mono. The other thing is Ximian is not about making money off of MONO per say, but applications based on it or that will be based on it.