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Microsoft’s original source code

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617 points EvgeniyZh | 4 comments | 03 Apr 25 21:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.714s | source
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santiagobasulto ◴[03 Apr 25 22:46 UTC] No.43576378[source]▶
Microsoft (and maybe even Bill Gates personally) generated a strong "dislike" sentiment to the hacker community. But we can't deny that he and Paul Allen were pure breed hackers and helped a lot the development of technology. Of course, we all prefer OSS and we'd pick Linus (or insert OSS dev name here) 100 times over one of the "evil capitalists"/s, but nevertheless they have to be recognized.
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1. hall0ween ◴[03 Apr 25 23:42 UTC] No.43576785[source]▶
I don’t have an opinion on the issue, cause it’s outta my wheelhouse. Well, aside from civility, which you need to work on.
2. quickslowdown ◴[04 Apr 25 00:48 UTC] No.43577196[source]▶
This is wrong, Linux had plenty of momentum before RedHat specifically was purchased by IBM.

I'm sure that helped its momentum in the corporate space, where it was already very present, but the whole family of Linux was very well established in servers, firewalls (more BSD than Linux here), mobile devices, embedded hardware, etc

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3. skissane ◴[04 Apr 25 01:51 UTC] No.43577541[source]▶
> This is wrong, Linux had plenty of momentum before RedHat specifically was purchased by IBM.

I’m not defending their overall argument, but I don’t think they are talking about the 2018 Red Hat acquisition, rather IBM’s 2000 announcement they were investing a billion dollars in Linux: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/ibm-to-spend-1-billi...

IBM has been a big contributor to Linux long before buying Red Hat

4. executesorder66 ◴[04 Apr 25 14:27 UTC] No.43582945[source]▶
Yeah, corporations have the resources to do that kind of investment in Linux which random hobbiests don't.

But why do they do it in the first place, instead of investing in their own obviously supiriour massively invested in OS's? Because Linux IS better, and the whole idea of it is better than some closed source crap. By nature of the GPL license it will snowball and everyone else will be left behind.