Microsoft's new business plan:
It's their old business plan: leverage their dominant position from one generation of technology to ensure dominance of the next. In this case use a small chunk of that nice cash pile on infrastructure running bought in and cloned technologies, and flog the assembled stack for as much as they can get away with.
I don't think MS would give two hoots about Windows if they thought they could extract as much money with Linux, and without that pesky matter of development. This route is even more attractive: they even get to back both horses at minimal cost, and without needing to actually develop something that kind-of works.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
