Some time ago, Microsoft announced a surprising shift in stance [archived version] with their newfound affection for Linux. This marked a notable departure from the era of Steve Ballmer, whose approach was considerably more hostile [archived version] towards competing operating systems, including Android and Linux, and the GPL license.

In the present day, Microsoft has taken to releasing a plethora of immensely successful projects as entirely open source, which includes Visual Studio Code, TypeScript, and even .NET, effectively replacing Mono, which formerly functioned as a the only third-party re-implementation of the .NET framework, of significant importance in non-Windows environments. Considering these facts, it is understandable to be tempted to conclude that Microsoft has finally adopted a different approach.

When Microsoft was evil

In 1998, the Halloween documents [archived version] were leaked. They are a series of confidential Microsoft memos that provided insight into Microsoft’s strategic thinking regarding the concept of freely available software. Among the strategies proposed in this document, Microsoft aimed to discredit open source, “extend and embrace” (more commonly known in open source circles as “embrace, extend, extinguish” or EEE), and legal threats under intellectual property law as a mechanism to discourage the adoption of open source.

In 2001, Microsoft sued Lindows, which was a Linux-based operating system designed mainly with Windows users in mind. As such, the user interface replicates much of the Windows desktop design language and most well-known for its ability to run Microsoft Windows applications thanks to the Wine compatibility layer, that serves as a reimplementation of many common Windows APIs.

Microsoft is… good now?

With the change of leadership from Steve Ballmer to Satya Nadella, Microsoft shifted their stance into a much more collaborative and open, with notable events such as the release of .NET as open source in 2014, the launch of the free Visual Studio Code for Mac, Windows, and Linux in 2015, joining the Linux Foundation, releasing SQL Server for Linux and launching the first version of Windows Subsystem for Linux all in 2016.

But the company was already changing even before Satya Nadella joined; In 2009, Microsoft contributed 20k LOC directly into the Linux kernel. This event took the world by storm, and marked such a dramatic departure from the old Microsoft ways that even Red Hat commented on it [archived version].

So what was the contribution about? Hyper-V drivers. They wanted Linux to work better under Hyper-V, which is a proprietary virtualisation technology found in Windows, for both consumer and Server editions. These drivers, while not essential, allow Linux to achieve higher performance when ran inside a Windows virtual environment. This, in addition to Microsoft contributions towards FreeRDP, which is a free and open source implementation of RDP typically used in Linux systems, makes the Enhanced Session Mode work much better.

So this wasn’t really centred around Linux that much, and more about allowing Windows users to virtualise Linux. This would later become even more important with the introduction of Microsoft Azure and their Linux server offerings.

This strategy aligns with Microsoft’s actions over the past decade. It suggests that their contributions are not merely out of a preference for Linux or a commitment to open source, but are mainly motivated by strategic business interests as both a way to foster a better image of the company in typically Microsoft-hostile circles, and, perhaps more importantly, growing Microsoft’s profits by either integrating open source or features of Linux directly into their desktop and server offerings, or releasing projects like Visual Studio Code or Microsoft Edge on Linux so they can enjoy a much wider audience, and of course receive large amounts of telemetry data from these Linux users.

Can there ever be good, honest corporate open source leaders?

It is unlikely. But in truth, Microsoft is far from the only self-serving software company that uses the open source community as a vehicle for profit generation.

Apple is also guilty of taking from the community (in the form of FreeBSD), and contributing little to nothing back; for example, has managed to take macOS to where it is today largely thanks to BSD OS which served as a base for NeXT, which in turn Mac OS X (and later macOS) were based on. Like with Microsoft, there are some open source contributions coming from Apple. Most notably, Bonjour (zeroconf, an implementation of multicast DNS) and CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) are two of the largest open source contributions that Apple has released, however, somewhat hypocritically, despite BSD having provided a solid foundation for Apple’s success nowadays in macOS, iPhone and iPads, Apple categorically forbids GPL-licensed applications in their App Store [archived version]

Other examples: Valve has made Linux gaming a reality and has contributed massively to open source community, even going as far as releasing Proton which is a tool that uses Wine mainly to run Windows videogames on Linux. This is mostly a net positive, except for the fact that Valve is in the game distribution business, and it is in their best interest to allow you to play your games on as many platforms as possible, this ensures competitors that have Linux software launchers are one step behind, while simultaneously allowing them to release gaming consoles for much cheaper because they get to bypass Windows licensing fees. Among other things, Gabe Newell, Valve’s CEO, has expressed concerns about the direction of Microsoft regarding the personal computer [archived link].

While Valve investing so much time and effort into Linux is definitely good news, especially for Linux gamers, it is important to consider Valve is doing this exclusively because it’s good for their profit margins. They don’t care too much about the open source community. Again, this is fairly normal, but I think it is very important to call it out. Corporations are not charities. Their only reason to exist is to make money; preferably more of it rather than less.