At OSCON (Open Source Convention) 2008, Microsoft announced their Sponsorship of The Apache Software Foundation, joining Google and Yahoo! at Platinum level. The generous contributions by Sponsoring organizations and individuals help offset the day-to-day operating expenses to advance the work of The ASF. – Apache.org
Microsoft being one of the owner of great software in the industry and great protector of their codes, become a platinum sponsor of ASF. The actual amount of the donation of MS to ASF is not stated on the announcement but being a platinum sponsor, the required minimum donation is about $100,000. This support added power to the open source society providing a bright future for Apache Projects.
I have known about ASF because of their Apache HTTP servers and PERL projects which are known to be powerful software over the cyberspace today. ASF Open source community is really gaining recognition and Microsoft’s support shows that the software company is open for being more interoperable to other software competitors.