A statement issued by Carl F. Rowe III, a spokesman for the Foundation, said it was pleased to report that Ballmer had accepted an invitation to join the board. "Considering that none of our members have anything to do with the community anymore, we thought we should have people like him, forward-looking souls who oversee the development of mediocre software and massive marketshare, on our board," Rowe told a media conference held in Washington DC this morning.

The Foundation was formed recently by a merger between the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group.

Rowe said: "To all naysayers, greenies and tree-huggers, I say, everything goes through three phases: first you do it for fun, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you end up doing it for money. Linux has now reached the final stage and we need people like Ballmer on board."

Ballmer was ecstatic about his appointment. "For a long time, Microsoft has supported the free and open source movement. I mean, come on, if we hadn't been putting out such crap in the marketplace, how do you think you Linux guys would have got a toehold?" he asked at a media conference held in Tegucigalpa, capital of the Honduras, this morning.

"Look at the symbolism; the Linux boys are holding their press conference in Washington DC, the capital of the world's number one capitalist state. And we, the biggest corporation in the world, are down here in the capital of a developing country," he said. "Come on, the times have changed."

Ballmer said one of the first things that Microsoft would do in response to what he called "this gesture of surrender" was to put out a Linux distribution called Winguin.

"We will grow robust e-markets and incentivise collaborative paradigms in order to synergise next-generation users," Ballmer said. "Targeting robust mindshare is our main objective."