Microsoft to help Mozila with Firefox for Vista

According to reports, Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lad has sent a letter to Mozilla developers offering them help to get Firefox working with the Vista, Microsoft's upcoming operating system.

Ramji has invited Mozilla developers to Redmond to have 1:1 discussion with the open source team on how to ensure that the Firefox browser and the Thunderbird mail client work smoothly with Vista.
The invitation was posted on the Google group as Ramji was of the view that their @microsoft .com email id might get blocked by Mozilla's spam filters.

Further elaborating on the invite, Ramji wrote that as part of his mission as an advocate for open source applications on Windows, he has got spaces set aside at the Windows Vista Readiness ISV Lab. In the past, the company has only invited commercial software developers to these labs. He further expressed his commitment to evolving the company's thinking beyond commercial companies to open source projects. That's why he went for to what he called as "non-trivial effort" to get slots for non-commercial open source projects.
Reportedly, Mike Beltzner, Phenomenologist, Mozilla Corporation has said that Mozilla would definitely be interested in getting some 1:1 support, though Firefox 2 and Thunderbird 2 are already being tested on Vista.

However, industry people are of the view that people don't buy operating systems (OS), but applications. So OS actually succeed only if there are compelling applications. Firefox is a popular browser and therefore Microsoft will want it on Windows Vista.