Strange things happen to Microsoft. First, an employee says that Microsoft is paralyzed, now they invite the Firefox and Thunderbird developers to Microsoft’s open source research center.

Sam Ramji, Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab Director, posted a message to Firefox developers on “mozilla.dev.planning” newsgroup asking them if they want ot take part on a 4-day event that will take place on Redmond. The event will be for 4 people and they will discuss with the team developers and support staff. Samji said that this invitation is a special one because they are not normally issuing invitations.

As part of my mission as an advocate for open source applications on Windows, I’ve gotten spaces set aside at the Windows Vista Readiness ISV Lab. In the past the company has only invited commercial software developers to these labs. I’m committed to evolving our thinking beyond commercial companies to include open source projects, so I went to the non-trivial effort of getting slots for non-commercial open source projects.

Microsoft hopes that with this move they will provide the open source developers enough information to make Firefox and Thunderbird run smoothly on Vista, Microsoft’s future operating system.

One funny thing regarding Ramji’s post is one part of its post:

I sent this invitation to staff@mozilla.org as well, but in case their spam filters are set to block @microsoft.com email addresses, I’m posting here.

No precise answer regarding if Firefox accepted the invitation or not, but someone by the name of Mike Schroepfer said:

I believe we are already in contact with your team via email. We will follow-up there.

Are Microsoft’s intentions serious and are they interested on Firefox running smooth on Vista or this is just a hidden trick?