Folks have already gotten a look at Windows 8 and are quietly requested that MS donate back their modified linux this and that source code back to the open source community as per the GNU liscense agreement that they signed.  

Poor Microsoft, caught hand in cookie jar again.

Microsoft cannot reinvent the low ARM chip requirement wheel all over again fast enough, they are having to do some of what Google did, but Google was honest and Android stayed a formal Linux fork until Linux quietly gave them permission to branch off as long as source code was given back when they had finished each android dessert flavor.  

And Google has released full source code on each android flavor when they are completely finished developing it (and got the next one out, generally) but Google just keeps a strong arm lock on their Android Marketplace as a means of enforcing their standards for each flavor of android.  

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will be the one and only cell phone and tablet Android Google will release -- works same same on both platforms.

It is all confusing at times, but what you do see is MS OS and Office stuff being forced to be much more hardware compatible to Android and Linux and Apple stuff, there is more hardware convergence going on all the time.  

Microsoft MUST play well on general Android hardware or Microsoft fades away in 3-5 years.   Microsoft asked Intel to cook up a energy efficient processor/graphics combo to effectively compete against ARM chipsets, but so far Intel hasn't gotten the tricks down pat yet.

AMD is a different story -- AMD is regenerating itself real good lately.  AMD is a big convergence player and AMD supports open standards for ARM and Linux on all their current chipsets.  Intel not so much but then you don't see Intel being a major player in the low end all that much right now since their best Atom chipsets suck wind compared to the current AMD offerings.

And now here comes Kal-El, an Arm super-chip with 4 processor cores and 12 (count them 12) parallel processing graphics cores.    Kal-El comes with the lowest ever energy consumption of ANY cell phone chip ever (just cranks up 1 processor and 1 graphics core for most normal tasks, only cranks up additional processing or graphics cores when they are actually needed, so overall energy consumption can be very very low unless you are actually doing something strenuous.

Watch both Google and Apple soon have only one single OS software that runs on phones and tablets and soon, coming soon, thin light long lasting laptops when Google finally fuses Android and Chrome OS together.

Watch Microsoft struggle to get something on the table while it continues to try to play its crappy little games with 4 levels of Windows 8 OS variants at different and ever larger prices -- until people get sick of it and simply stop paying for it.   Same machine will run a fully functional open source OS after all.  


If it wasn't for MS Office keeping a wrist lock on business you'd see a lot more movement to free stuff right now.

and the Ipod/Android phone & tablet generation has even fewer mental ties to Microsoft Office because they don't really use it all that much.

 
Hell, Oracle has a publicized internal policy that they will freely use the best of the public domain code, brand it as their own and charge their customers $$$ for maintaining it.  

After all, it is free to all to use ....   (Microsoft included apparently)

Why do you think Open Office forked off into Libre Office (GNU license) six months ago and Oracle and IBM now say they have "given" Open Office over to the Apache Foundation for them to license under the Apache license.  

And all the distros now ship Libre Office instead.

Freedom of even the best free software can be warped into "feedom" once big business gets its hands on it.  

They start by putting unique hooks on the files that are saved and a few releases later you can't even open the biatch without "their" version of the software which now has a small required "donation" to help maintain the Apache Foundation ....  (which they kinda sorta control now).

 
I guess the answer has to be that Microsoft needs to get into Android space, and Android is simply a Google tweeked Linux, so anything that will work with the calls and hardware are gonna have to share somebody's code and Microsoft would rather deal with the GNU foundation rather than Google?

Remember, Ipods and Ipads run a specialized ARM chip made for/by Apple, so using BSD works for Apple but it really isn't Android compatible any more.    Heck, Apple doesn't want it to be compatible.

Windows 8 MUST BE ABLE TO RUN ON ANDROID EQUIPMENT or it is all over but the shouting for Microsoft.

Both Linux and BSD were Unix clones, but BSD (and Apple) is a lot closer to real Unix and Linux has drifted slightly further away, and with Android splitting off it has drifted even more further away.  

Remember, if mainstream Linux likes something, if they see something neat in Android that they want, they may adopt it into the main Linux kernel tree and drift even further away from the old Unix base point.  

Full ARM compatibility as ARM evolves and full Netflicks compatibility and drivers for this and drivers for that -- yup, you could see it coming up in the not too distant future -- especially once Windows 8 creates a nexus point in the next few years that Linux can adopt cleanly since Linux is the root standard, not Microsoft.


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Danger

Lots of independent programmers hate Microsoft with a purple passion -- if you think attacks on Windows are bad now, wait until the Linux world sees Microchoke trying to take over "their code" and ease themselves into the drivers seat.

It is gonna get bad in about 1-2 years from now when Windoz 8 comes out for ARM and the Win8 attacks begin.   The attackers will know that code better than inside out, they will be the ones who wrote it AND maintain it.   And the shoe will be on the other foot when key Win 8 drivers and such simply "quit working well" when the patches roll out.

        ..... use Microsoft's own dirty tricks against them?   Poetical justice, ain't it?