The annual Debian developers conference, debconf 16, is taking place July 2-9 in Cape Town, South Africa, featuring for the first time ever Microsoft as a silver sponsor.

This seems consistent with the strategy, that pessimists may define EEE (embrace, extend, extinguish), of seeking close integration with the GNU/Linux system.

The move, from a traditionally hostile company that recently started showing enthusiasm towards open source software, is causing a mixture of derision and opposition in the community. As the grey beards in the IT community might recall, most of Microsoft partners, from IBM to the humble dev, tend to end up screwed in the long term. Will GNU/Linux be the exception?