Red Hat seems a little bit sore at Microsoft.

Not exactly breaking news, right? Except the Linux and open-source provider is tempering the broadside with a little bit of praise, applauding Microsoft's "significant contribution to the Linux kernel under the GNU General Public License version 2" even as it complains that "it seems like only yesterday that Microsoft was declaring Linux, open-source software and the GPL to be the axis of evil."

That's from an article that the Red Hat legal team posted on the company's press site. They follow it up with a suggestion about how Microsoft, if it should desire, can "be considered a full-fledged member of the Linux community":

"Over the years, the individual and corporate members of the community have through formal and informal steps made clear that they will not pursue or threaten patent litigation in the Linux area. Patent threats are irreconcilable with the norms and values that are at the heart of Linux."

And then they add a nifty little kicker:

"To win the respect and trust of the Linux community, Microsoft should unequivocally disavow such conduct and pledge that its patents will never be used against Linux or other open-source developers and users."

Yeah right, Microsoft replied.

Actually, its response was a little bit longer than that: in a corporate blog posting, Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's corporate vice president and deputy general counsel, wrote that contributing to open-source projects and "insisting on respect of [Microsoft's] intellectual property rights" were not "inconsistent," and that "striking a balance between them is one of the key things every commercial technology company must do in order to compete effectively in a mixed-source world."

Translation: We'll continue to contribute to open-source projects (Gutierrez cites Microsoft's release of 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community among its steps in that direction), but we'll continue to vigorously defend anything we see as violating our intellectual property rights. Like 'Defending the Alamo'-style vigorous. Picture CEO Steve Ballmer on the ramparts with a raccoon hat and rifle, and you get the idea.

Or, as Gutierrez put it: "It would seem that for [certain open-source defenders], IP issues (that's 'Intellectual Property') should remain unresolved unless the IP holder is prepared to completely surrender the fruits of its investment in innovation." A paragraph later, he added a kicker of his own: "Taking purely ideological positions does not work in real life."

As the IT world undergoes yet another of its seemingly-continual paradigm shifts, Microsoft seems to find itself in the interesting (and in many ways unenviable) position of having to at least partially abandon many of the practices that made it the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Just as the emergence of cloud-based productivity suites such as Google Apps compelled it to partially transform Office 2010 into a (somewhat limited) online service, the continued prevalence of Linux and other open-source entities within both the consumer world and the enterprise is continuously nudging Microsoft to open up select parts of itself.

There must be debates within Redmond over where to draw that particular line in the sand. Do you release those 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community and leave it at that? Once you've released the Microsoft Live Services Plug-in to integrate Microsoft's Live@edu services with the Moodle course management system, how are you expected to follow that up? How much do you charge for royalties when you make a patent agreement with an open-source vendor?

Red Hat might want Microsoft to vow to set down its rifles, but with a changing IT landscape and increased competition from Google and other players, Microsoft seems equally determined to defend its walls.