Microsoft staying in China or not will make no difference to the political situation in China. Furthermore, I wish companies would stay away from politics altogether: no contributions to parties, no statements about how good or bad is a local government. Follow the local laws, and leave politics to the country's citizens.

Just because Microsoft writes bad software and it is a monopoly, it does not mean that all it does is evil. I think that Google's move was the result of many issues that just make doing business there too hard. This includes tarnishing the Google brand by exposing itself to criticism of 'collaborating' with a totalitarian regime, but the gmail hacking was also a factor.

Paul Casal
jBilling Open Source Billing

As someone that is employed by an open source company, I have mixed feelings about this. I am passionate about open source, I love coding for a company that is making its living out of distributing software for free. I do see open source projects struggling some times, so getting a kind of subsidy like this might be good. But what about those companies that have to work hard to make any money and keep an open source project alive? This could be a place where the market can work, leaving those without a good business plan or strong community out, while those that have been able to attract volunteers and customers thrive.