Microsoft recently announced that it has become a platinum sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), donating USD 100,000 to the open-source organization and made its first code contribution to an Apache project. The non-profit Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is a group of developers that create and develop open source projects, such as the Apache Web server and the Axis Web services framework.

"We thank Microsoft for their generous sponsorship that goes towards supporting The Apache Software Foundation and the over 60 top level projects in use and development within the ASF," ASF chairman Jim Jagielski said in a statement.

Microsoft has also contributed a patch to ADOdb, popular data access layer for PHP used by many applications. With this patch, the company's SQL Server will now support this technology natively. "This is our first code contribution to PHP community projects but will not be the last," Microsoft platform strategy director Sam Ramji said.

By cooperating with open source developers, Microsoft may be hoping to ease pressure from U.S. and European regulators, who have charged the company with using monopolistic practices to protect its software franchise.

The move, announced at this week's O'Reilly Open Source Convention marks the first time Microsoft has contributed to the Apache organization.