Let’s forget about search for a moment, and Microsoft’s obvious need to buy a leading online company or face extinction.

Microsoft’s proposed $45 billion buy of Yahoo would give the Redmond, Wash company control over a top open source e-mail company, open source projects and an open source infrastructure. On September 17 of 2007, Yahoo bought Zimbra for $350 million. Yahoo’s infrastructure is built on BSD. Yahoo has released a myriad of software to the open source community and even sponsors some open source projects.

So this deal would put Microsoft directly into the open source software business.

There’s no doubt that Yahoo! shareholders would delight in such a mega transaction. But what about the open source developers who built Zimbra? What about all the Zimbra customers who bought into the open source e-mail specifically because it was an alternative to Outlook and other proprietary offerings? Will Microsoft crush Zimbra into non-existence? Feed the Zimbra features into Outlook?

More Here

Also: Doc Searls Wonders: What happens if Microsoft buys Yahoo?