Stephen Walli, the former Microsoft exec turned open-source proponent, is at it again.

This time, the former Softie is making a case for why Microsoft should consider open-sourcing some of its crown jewels, including SQL Server and SharePoint. And he's got a few reasons that might make even closed-source proponents reconsider their business-model philosophies.

Walli isn't any ordinary Linux lover. He worked for Microsoft, following Redmond's acquisition of Softway Systems, a company that developed an environment that allowed the rehosting of Unix applications on top of Windows NT, and of which Walli was a founder. (Softway's Interix environment morphed, over time, into Microsoft's Services for Unix technology.)

After five years of serving as a business development manager for Windows (and, before that, a program manager on Rotor, Microsoft's Shared Source implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure), Walli joined the open-source consultancy Optaros. Now Walli is chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at a new startup that he won't name.

On his blog during the past couple of weeks, Walli "created a thought experiment on some of the more creative things Microsoft could be doing with open source software to customer and business benefit."

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Microsoft, SharePoint, SQL Server, Open-Source