Microsoft president thinks the company was on the wrong side of history once

NEW DELHI: The Linux-Microsoft rivalry might have cooled down over the years but it certainly was a heated one. Especially at the turn of the century with the two companies often sparring at each other. Microsoft and Linux used to be at loggerheads during the days of the desktop with former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer even branding Linux in 2001 as “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” However, it looks like Microsoft has finally acknowledged that it was in the wrong. Microsoft president Brad Smith believes that the tech giant was wrong about open source, as per a report by The Verge. At an MIT event, he reportedly said, “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.”
Smith is a veteran at Microsoft with over 25 years with the company.
The current president thinks otherwise now, with Microsoft doing a flip to its earlier clashes with open-source software. It is now the company that happens to be the largest contributor to the open-source projects across the globe.