@Brett Brennan Nicely hypothesised!

I like where your reasoning is leading, however there are a couple of possible gotchas in this: KDE, Gnome are Post Microsoft (PMS); It might be GNU tools; M$ marketing machinery may also be lumping Open Office into the bucket for propaganda purposes.

I agree that hedging for M$ would be a sensible business strategy, especially since they have paid horrendous amounts of cash to both Novell and SCO.

If you want my lame prediction... it would make sense for MSFT buy Novell.