Why Does Everyone Want to Sleep With Microsoft?

I just don't get it, why does everyone want to get into bed with Microsoft? It always ends in tears with the unlucky bedfellow usually catching something which causes their health to deteriorate rapidly thereafter. In the full knowledge of Microsoft's long list of jilted lovers there is active lobbying to have a Microsoft open source license approved by the OSI.

My first question is why do they need their own? If Microsoft really wants to participate in the open source world what better way to demonstrate that commitment than by using an existing OSI approved license. There are 59 listed on the OSI website, surely one of those will suit Microsoft's purposes.

But no, Microsoft want their own and considering all the intimidatory things Microsoft has said about Linux and Open Source is it any wonder many in the open source world are skeptical.

Matt Asay in support of approving the license wrote:

It would be morally wrong, in my worldview, to discriminate against Microsoft in this endeavor.

No Matt it is not "morally wrong" to discriminate against those that seek to harm you! Isn't this the same company that says Linux, Samba, and OpenOffice.org infringe it's patents illegally using Microsoft's intellectual property? Isn't this the company that called Open Source a cancer and equated it to communism. Isn't this the same company that is threatening to sue Open Source end users?

I think Glyn Moody has it right about Microsoft's courting of OSI. He connects it with Microsoft's attempts to have OOXML approved as an ISO standard.

Microsoft is aiming to blunt the undeniable power of openness by hollowing it out. If OOXML is an open standard, and some of its own software licences become OSI-approved, Microsoft will be able to claim that it, too, is an open standard, open source company.

This smells an awful lot like Embrace, Extend, Extinguish so lets avoid the embrace.