To Microsoft, Linux used to be a 'malignant cancer.' Now it and other open source projects are running on Microsoft's own platforms. Here's how Bill Gates changed everything at one meeting in 2008.



From Neowin:

For three years, Sam Ramji served as Microsoft's head of open source software. One of his duties included bringing Bill Gates and other Microsoft execs up to speed on open source at a briefing every few months. One fateful day in the summer of 2008, the meeting took a different turn when the question of whether the company should actually start using open source software, pitting Ramji and former chief software architect Ray Ozzie against the other execs, with Bill Gates in the middle.

Ramji and Ozzie pointed out the advantages open source software would bring to the table, while the legal team laid out a plan of how it could work from their standpoint. The others took the usual standpoint, utterly opposed to the idea. Bill Gates had other ideas, taking to the whiteboard to show how it could work. That pretty much settled it.

  How Bill Gates changed Microsoft's stance on open source