With open source software becoming ever more popular, which direction will Microsoft move in?

Semi-Open Source…

same direction they have been going in, close mindedness and a general interest in everything but what their customers want.

Same direction.

If microsoft started making open source software, people would see how crappy their programming is.

So I doubt it

Edit:
Inconclusive_conjunction just informed me that microsoft has already released open source software:
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/default.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiX
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexWiki

MS has released MS-PL — Microsoft Permissive License. That has been certified by the Open Source Initiative as an opensource license.

Perhaps there are a few more opensource licenses that MS will roll out. There were some programs that were released under those opensource licenses.

In fact, Microsoft has nothing against or for opensource in particular. There are some people in the opensource movement who are in fact, free software people. Some time back, Microsoft vowed to eradicate Free Software off the planet. That has evoked some anti-Microsoft sentiments from the Free Software people that are in the opensource movement as well.

As for MS’s vow to quash Free Software, with all their money and power and influences, MS has lost some patents in the courts of law, to the Free Software movement’s legal counsel. Ms is itching to inflict such wounds in the Free Software camp. Its attempts have so far been unsuccessful against only a dozen of people who make the core of the Free Software movement.

The direction Microsoft will move in will largely be influenced by new generation companies such as Google which use and contribute heavily to Free and Open Source Softwares. Taking a cue from the past, MS could become a silent, powerful but a mammoth company. When MS was the new kid on the block, IBM was the big brother in the computer industry. Now IBM is a silent, powerful, mammoth company.