Microsoft has become a sponsor of The Open Source Census, a project started earlier this year that aims to track and catalog the use of open-source software in enterprises worldwide, the group announced Monday. The company's "customers, partners and developers are working in increasingly heterogeneous environments," so participation in projects such as the census is relevant to the "ecosystem" in which Microsoft operates, said Sam Ramji, Microsoft' senior director of platform strategy, in a prepared statement.

It is the latest gesture by the Redmond software giant toward the open-source community, which has long regarded it as a bogeyman due to actions like its claim last year that open-source software violated more than 200 of its patents. Ramji, who could not be reached for comment, is seen as a major driver behind Microsoft's gradually warming attitude -- at least publicly -- toward open source and interoperability.

Source:→ PC World