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One group that won’t be physically onstage with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Los Angeles will be the open-source software vendors that the Redmond software vendor increasingly has been encouraging to port their products to Windows. But that doesn’t mean Microsoft is simply assuming that if they build a new back-end infrastructure, these newfound friends will automatically show up.

Microsoft has been making a concerted effort in recent months to convince open-source vendors that LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl) isn’t the only game in town. Porting apps to Windows and tying into the supporting Microsoft servers can make good business sense, the Redmondians have argued. A number of open-source vendors subsequently began offering versions of their wares that ran on previous versions of Windows Server

Microsoft is stepping up its recruitment campaign around the next iterations of its products, especially Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. In fact, this week back at corporate headquarters in Redmond, Microsoft officials are working closely with members of the Apache Software Foundation — whom Microsoft invited to its Open Source Lab — to help Apache get its open-source Web server and other products to run on Windows Server 2008. Microsoft Open Source Community Lead Garrett Serack has been blogging the minutia surrounding the Apache representatives’ visit.

Apache isn’t the only “open-source hero” with whom the Microsoft’s brass is actively working to get more products to pass the battery of “Works With” Windows Server 2008 and “Certified For” Windows Server 2008 tests. As of Wednesday, launch day, three open-source companies had passed the gauntlet, according to Microsoft.