I’ve covered a few stories on this blog [1], [2], [3] where Microsoft is making some positive strides toward opening up to the concept of open source, particularly in relation to it’s software development arm.

On October 3rd Scott Guthrie, manager of the teams who build the development and platform tools at Microsoft, announced that the source code for the .NET Framework would be released with the next release of Visual Studio (VS 2008).  This announcement is the latest in a series of moves by Microsoft over the past couple of years.

Though the source code will be available for download and reference by software developers, it will be licensed under the Microsoft Reference License, meaning that the source will not be freely distributable.

Still, this is a major step forward for the software giant, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next step will be on the journey toward peaceful coexistence with the open source community.