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Mea culpa from Microsoft

May 18, 2020.

Brad Smith.

Brad Smith. © Microsoft.

Microsoft President Brad Smith now believes the company was wrong about open source (better late than never): “Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when open source exploded at the beginning of the century, and I can say that about me personally,” said Smith in a recent MIT event. Smith has been at Microsoft for more than 25 years and was one of the company’s senior lawyers during its battles with open-source software. “The good news is that, if life is long enough, you can learn… that you need to change,” added Smith. Microsoft has certainly changed since Steve Ballmer called Linux a cancer in 2001. The software giant is now the single largest contributor to open-source projects in the world, beating Facebook, Docker, Google, Apache, and many others. Microsoft has evolved for the better over the years, especially since the retirement of the booming Steve Ballmer in 2014, who embodied everything that many people hated about the arrogant Redmond giant.

The Verge, Tom Warren, “Microsoft: we were wrong about open source.”