In April this year, Microsoft took a huge step along its open source path. The result was the announcement of a new, wholly-owned subsidiary at its headquarters in Redmond dedicated to open technologies, called Microsoft Open Technologies. For its senior director of open source communities, it appointed ex-lawyer Gianugo Rabellini.

The technology giant already contributes to the development of key mobile device standards like HTML5, and high-profile mobile open source projects such as jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch and Apache’s PhoneGap. It is a major contributor to the Linux kernel, and many other open standards and projects.