MICROSOFT WAS WRONG ABOUT OPEN SOURCE

PRESIDENT SAYS THEY’RE FREINDS

IN 2001 THE THEN-CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, called Linux “a cancer that attaches itself to an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” The company has calmed down since then. The current president, Brad Smith, thinks that “Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when open source exploded.”

Not only has Microsoft stopped fighting open source, it has joined in. A Linux kernel is now part of Windows 10, enabling it to run Linux software directly, and the company is now the world’s largest single contributor to open-source projects.

Microsoft’s new “open design philosophy” means we are likely to see more open-source projects folded into Windows, and a bit more of Windows opened up to the world.