Do you remember Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, dancing around on stage chanting “developers, developers, developers.”

It still ranks as one of the funniest and cringe worthy bits of video I have seen. A bit like your old uncle trying to dance at a wedding to a rap song. But deep down Steve had a point. Microsoft is nothing without Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Value Added Resellers (VARs) that extend the Windows platform.

Well finally the Linux world has heard his cries and have formed the Open Solutions Alliance which is being debuted this week at LinuxWorld whether this is enough only time will tell.

Personally I think the platform battle has moved on from the OS to the web. The coming battle is between XAML and XUL webtop applications. The question is can Mozilla do any better to promote their platform above Microsoft. Just having MozDev and developer.mozilla.org may not be enough. Microsoft is already getting its DPE (Developer Programmer Evangelist) teams into gear with a tsunami of announcements, cool demos and free software.

So what do Mozilla do with all of the $72m they earn’t from Google?