Microsoft reaches out to Firefox lovers

The head of Microsoft's open source business has offered help to get Firefox to work with the upcoming Vista operating system but it remains to be seen if Mozilla and the open source community will respond positively to the gesture.

Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft's open source software lab, posted an open invitation to work with Microsoft on a Mozilla development discussion group on Monday.

Ramji wrote: "I'm writing to see if you are open to some 1:1 support in getting Firefox and Thunderbird to run on Vista."

He stressed Microsoft is "committed to evolving our thinking beyond commercial companies to include open source projects" in the Vista project.

Ramji was also anxious that Mozilla and the open source community should not take the offer lightly. He stressed his contribution to Vista is the "non-trivial effort of getting slots for non-commercial open source projects".

The early signs from the open source community are that some are suspicious of Microsoft's motives.

But others said Monday's offer is a sign Microsoft is changing. The company has finally realised "ultimately… proprietary technologies will always get replaced by an industry-supported, open-standard alternative, hence the embrace of RSS, Open Source Lab, XML and royalty-free access to Open XML", posted one enthusiast on the Ars Technica website.

Firefox already runs successfully on existing Windows, Linux and Macintosh operating systems. Testing by silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK found it also runs well in Vista beta 2, so it's not clear why Mozilla would need help from Microsoft.

However, the Vista Readiness Labs does include use of Microsoft's Application Compatibility Toolkit, which tests more of a product than might be explored during normal use.

Mozilla Europe said it is "too early to comment" on Microsoft's offer.

Colin Barker writes for ZDNet UK