Microsoft has always had an awkward relationship with Linux specifically and with free software in general. Maybe awkward isn't exactly the right word. For many hackers and hobbyists, their first real exposure to Microsoft and its then-CEO Bill Gates came way back in 1976, when he accused others in the then-nascent market for personal computing software of stealing his company's products.
"As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software," Gates wrote in an infamous open letter. "Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?"
Over the ensuing 20 years, of course, Microsoft experienced the kind of double-digit growth and open skies that we now associate with companies such as Apple and Google, and at the end of this run it dominated the PC market in ways that even Apple and Google can't today muster in their own markets.
But not coincidentally, perhaps, the mid-1990s was also the age in which Linux came of age. First conceived in 1991 by hacker Linus Torvalds as a way to mix a free version of UNIX with ubiquitous Intel x86-based PCs, Linux started slowly but gained steam within a few years, jumpstarting a new market, creating companies, and establishing a legitimate contender to both proprietary UNIX vendors and to Microsoft in the server market.
Linux hit my radar in the mid-1990s, just as I was beginning my WinInfo newsletter. Eager to be less tunnel-visioned and open up readers to non-Microsoft technologies, I also wrote about Linux (and other companies such as Apple) and began experimenting with early Linux distributions such as Slackware, which was then shipped out on large sets of floppy discs.
Linux scared the crap out of Microsoft for the same reason it excited me: What, I thought, would happen if Linux could successfully provide a Windows-like experience, but for free? And what if the Linux community could somehow come up with an Office competitor that provided just the most important 20 percent of the features we had all come to expect from the Microsoft solution?
What indeed. These fears drove over a decade's worth of strategy at the software giant and were no doubt part of the reason Microsoft found itself in antitrust courts around the world, accused of anti-competitive behavior. In fact, things got so dicey that Microsoft sponsored a project to port its Office productivity suite to Linux, a project that ultimately never saw the light of day. But it existed. You bet it did.
In 1998, internal Microsoft memos called "The Halloween Documents" by scared open-source partisans were leaked to the web. In what can only be described as a very credible internal assessment of Linux made during a time when many were simply ignoring this system, Microsoft determined that it was a credible threat and should be countered. And in 1999, Microsoft published a site called "Linux Myths," in which it argued, conversely, that Linux was in fact not a threat to Windows NT because Microsoft's products were so much more capable and mature. Curious.
What's happened since, of course, is that Linux succeeded quite well on the server side, while sputtering on the desktop. And in that same time period, Microsoft's Windows Server went from being the low-cost, easy-to-use alternative to the big iron of the day to being the entrenched, professional, high-end solution favored by big business. And Linux plays the role that NT used to play: It's used by smaller and mid-sized businesses, largely, and while Microsoft can make claims about revenue advantages, the overall server pie is still pretty heterogeneous.
So Microsoft played the intellectual property card, claiming that the open-source OS violated its software patents. And it's gone after every major Linux vendor you can think of, generally achieving settlements in which these firms end up paying Microsoft for what may or may not be actionable IP violations.
And then everything got really messy.