Microsoft and open source: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:38, 25 April 2025

Revision as of 13:46, 25 April 2025

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=== Initial stance on open source ===

{{See also|Open Letter to Hobbyists}}

[[File:Altair BASIC Paper Tape.jpg|thumb|e[[Altair 8K BASIC]] on paper tape. In 1976, Microsoft co-founder [[Bill Gates]] expressed frustration with most computer hobbyists who were using his company's software without having paid for it.]]

The paradigm of freely sharing computer [[source code]]—a practice known as [[open source|open so]]—traces back to the earliest commercial computers, whose user groups shared code to reduce duplicate work and costs.{{sfn|Radits|2019|pp=13–14}} Following an antitrust suit that forced the unbundling of IBM's hardware and software, a proprietary software industry grew throughout the 1970s, in which companies sought to protect their software products. The technology company [[Microsoft|Microsof]]<nowiki/> was founded in this period and has long been an embodiment of the proprietary paradigm and its tension with open source practices, well before the terms "free software" or "open source" were coined.<!-- also "seen by many as the archfoe of the free and open source movement" p. 32 --> Within a year of founding Microsoft, [[Bill Gates]] wrote an [[Open Letter to Hobbyists|open letter]] that positioned the hobbyist act of copying software as a form of theft.{{sfn|Radits|2019|pp=17–18}}<!-- also see Weber 2004 here -->

Microsoft successfully expanded in personal computer and enterprise server markets through the 1990s, partially on the strength of the company's marketing strategies.{{sfn|Radits|2019|pp=27–28}} By the late 1990s, Microsoft came to view the growing open source movement as a threat to their revenue and platform. Internal strategy memos from this period, known as the [[Halloween documents]], describe the company's potential approaches to stopping open source momentum. One strategy was "[[embrace-extend-extinguish]]", in which Microsoft would adopt standard technology, add proprietary extensions, and upon establishing a customer base, would lock consumers into the proprietary extension to assert a monopoly of the space. The memos also acknowledged open source as a methodology capable of meeting or exceeding proprietary development methodology. Microsoft downplayed these memos as the opinions of an individual employee and not Microsoft's official position.{{sfn|Radits|2019|p=27}}