Who called Linux a cancer?

CEO Steve Ballmer
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously branded Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches” back in 2001.

Why has Microsoft embraced Linux?

It’s cloud-friendly 90\% of the ‘workloads’ (e.g. applications, business databases and virtual machines) that reside on the public cloud are built with Linux. Because it’s modular, configurable and can support so many use cases, it’s by far the most popular OS for cloud-based development projects.

Why does Microsoft support Linux?

Although the company is now thoroughly cross-platform, not every application will move to or take advantage of Linux. Instead, Microsoft adopts or supports Linux when the customers are there, or when it wants to take advantage of the ecosystem with open-source projects.

Is Foss communism?

No, it is “gift ecomomy”, not “communism”.

When did Microsoft embrace Linux?

When Microsoft released Hyper-V in 2008, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server became the first non-Windows operating system officially supported on Hyper-V. Microsoft and Novell signed an agreement to work on interoperability two years earlier. Microsoft first began contributing to the Linux kernel in 2009.

Is Windows becoming Linux?

The choice will not really be Windows or Linux, it will be whether you boot Hyper-V or KVM first, and Windows and Ubuntu stacks will be tuned to run well on the other.

Is Linux a ‘malignant cancer’?

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer no longer thinks Linux is a “malignant cancer”. With Azure moving up the food chain in Redmond, Microsoft has since 2012 softened its stance on open-source software, capped off by this week’s move to port SQL Server to Linux.

Is Microsoft really “Microsoft ♥ Linux”?

In a press and analyst briefing a few months back, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put up a slide proclaiming “Microsoft ♥ Linux”. Wow! What a great slide and what a change for Microsoft! The trade press picked up on this slide in a major way, with a number of articles echoing this new approach to Linux and open source within Microsoft.

Is open source really a cancer to Microsoft?

Former Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer once considered Linux users a bunch of communist thieves and saw open source itself as a cancer on Microsoft’s intellectual property.

What did Steve Ballmer say about Linux?

Eleven years before that, shortly after taking the helm at Microsoft, Ballmer said, “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” The other c-word he used for Linux was communism, accusing the Linux community of diluting Microsoft’s R&D spend by infringing on its intellectual property.