Announcements
Microsoft is once again a Platinum Level sponsor of the annual Open Source Business Conference, which is being held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. As part of this sponsorship, Robert Youngjohns, the President for Microsoft North America, will deliver a keynote address titled “A World of Choice: Partnering for Success.”
Microsoft is holding the third annual Open Source ISV Forum on March 23, 2009. This is a Microsoft BizSpark event, and attendees will get to meet a number of BizSpark Network Partners, including venture capitalists, angel investors, and incubators. The event is also part of Microsoft NXT, a program that helps open source ISVs extend their products to the Windows environment.
ApacheCon 2008 was the venue for Microsoft to talk about some of the new milestones that have been chalked up on the company's journey towards greater participation and growth with open source communities, and its strategy of "architecting for participation." You can watch the keynote address here.
Sam Ramji, Microsoft's Senior Director of Platform Strategy, delivered the keynote address at the 10th annual Open Source Convention (Oscon) in Portland. Sam's keynote was entitled Participation in a World of Choice and outlined significant investments and partnerships Microsoft is making with the open source communities.
Participate 08 was a one-day, Microsoft-sponsored summit, that was held in coordination with the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (Oscon). Participate 08 facilitated a dialogue about open source and other collaborative communities and helped explore opportunities for greater participation in the design, development, and deployment of software in the modern IT environment. Read more about it here.
Resources for Getting Started
We have a number of resources available for people interested in open source development at Microsoft.

Developers and Maintainers
Learn, be creative, and solve problems collaboratively, using whatever approach you choose. Learn more...
Let Microsoft programs and initiatives help you start an open source project.

IT Administrators
Leverage our extensive online technical documentation and newsgroups to solve critical problems.
See all resources for IT Administrators

Government Agencies and NGOs
Learn how Microsoft helps governments and NGOs use information technology, including open source, to serve its citizens
See all resources for Government Agencies and NGOs
Projects and Partnerships
In addition to hosting open source projects on CodePlex, Microsoft partners with open source-based businesses and communities.
Sourceforge is the world's largest open source software development Web site. Learn more...
What do open source companies and their developers actually think of Microsoft and its relationship with them and their communities, and how much do they have in common? Microsoft decided to find out. See what the folks over at BitRock and MindTouch had to say.
Microsoft was a participant and sponsor of the 2008 Government Open Source Conference, where attendees explored the business case and real-world applications for open technology to deliver the next generation of government services. Learn more...
CodePlex is Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. Learn more...
MindTouch Deki Wiki is an open source Web services platform for creating mashups with a wiki interface. Learn more...