Well, I never.

Microsoft has started a 501.c6 non-profit open source foundation, a bipolar strategy greeted by suspicion, hoots, catcalls, defamation and virtual mooning by the open source set.

It's called the CodePlex Foundation, which is not to be confused with Codeplex com, Microsoft's version of Sourceforge hosting a reported 10,000 projects. Microsoft is kicking in a million dollars to meet the organization's first-year expenses. After that other folk, who haven't been recruited yet, are supposed to contribute to its maintenance.

Imagine a kinda halfway house where proprietary software companies and the open source left can exchange source code, but not patent portfolios, hammer out interoperability and in general try to work out their differences in development methodologies and intellectual property.

It's supposed to increase commercial participation in open source projects either through IP contributions to the foundation under a standard open source license - which one, it says, depends on the project - or through time volunteered to open source projects.

It's assumed the projects selected will ultimately be good for Microsoft somehow but rights are supposed to extend in perpetuity to downstream developers and users. Copyrights will be assigned to the Foundation.

The idea is to be broader based than the foundations that represent particular projects, platforms or applications, such as Firefox and the Mozilla Foundation, or Gnome and the Gnome Foundation.

The plans, including a charter that articulates the kinds of projects the Foundation works with, and what relationship the Foundation will have with those projects, are currently supposed to be rough-hewn or non-existent so that other people can refine them in accordance with your typical open source process.

Microsoft said, "We don't have it all figured out yet. We know that commercial software developers are under-represented on open source projects. We know that commercial software companies face very specific challenges in determining how to engage with open source communities. We know that there are misunderstandings on both sides. Our aim is to advance the IT industry for both commercial software companies and open source communities by helping to meet these challenges."

It caught hell for not having broader participation, proving that it was in a no-win situation. If it did, it would have caught hell for that too.

To address the many eyebrows raised by such a thing, Microsoft explained that it has "an evolving engagement with open source" - (well, that's one way of putting it) - "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." It skipped over the other faucets of its relationship with open source.

It also claimed to see a "convergence of maturing technology and evolving business models," an inflection point "where more commercial companies are willing to participate in open source projects" and "a great opportunity to drive change."

The CodePlex Foundation will be run on an interim basis by Sam Ramji, Microsoft's departing open source interlocutor, who's bolting Microsoft for some kind of cloud bivouac on September 25. Microsoft has yet to name a replacement, but Ramji will stay with the Foundation for the next few months.

He and the Microsoft-dominated CodePlex board are supposed to replace themselves in the next 100 days with representatives from commercial software companies and open source communities.

Current board members include Bill Staples, general manager of Microsoft's web platform and tools team; Stephanie Boesch, a Microsoft NET Framework program manager; Miguel de Icaza, Novell VP, developer platform; Britt Johnston, a Microsoft product unit manager for data and modeling; and Shaun Walker, DotNetNuke co-founder.

Microsoft says "there are a number of ways for individuals and companies to participate in the Foundation - via sponsorship, or by becoming a member of the board of directors or board of advisors." So it's not taking members per se.

According to the CodePlex charter, the board sets the Foundation's "vision and policy."

Its advisory board, described as the "conscience of the Foundation," includes VA founder and SugerCRM interim CEO Larry Augustin; MySQL co-inventor Monty Widenius; MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson; Microsoft CodePlexcom chief Sara Ford; HP FOSSology lead architect Robert Gobbeille; Microsoft SubText chief Phil Haack; Microsoft Developer Division principal program manager Scott Hanselman; Microsoft IronRuby creator John Lam; Microsoft NUnit and XUnitNET co-author Jim Newkirk; Microsoft director of technology, licensing and customer advocacy Monty O'Kelley and Interix Unix-on-NT founder and Microsoft acquisition Stephen Walli, now a consultant.

All the Microsoft people have open source or Unix credentials.

The Foundation will be run by a small staff beginning with deputy director Mark Stone, formerly with O'Reilly and VA Linux.

See Codeplex org