On Friday, I (Joe Brockmeier) had a chance to have a short talk with Cohen, and got a definitive answer. Cohen said that "there is no way we would do a joint research project with Microsoft." If OSDL were to participate in such a project, Cohen said that when the report came out, no matter what the broad outcome of the report was, anything negative about Linux would be exploited for marketing purposes by Microsoft.

Setting aside the marketing implications, Cohen also stressed that "no one is clamoring for" OSDL to do a market research paper with Microsoft. (Other than, I suppose, Microsoft…) OSDL does commission white papers and studies from time to time, when it makes sense to do so for their member organizations — but "nobody's been asking" for OSDL to produce a research project like what Taylor proposed.

Joe Brockmeier @ ZDNet