Former Microsoft CEO No Longer Negatively Attacks Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Former Microsoft CEO No Longer Negatively Attacks Linux

Back in 2001, Steve Ballmer who was leading Microsoft at the time called Linux a "cancer", but now he no longer has those views...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ballmer-Linux-Cancer-Free

[Anvil]

that email can lick my butthole

[uid313]

I would like to see more of the .NET Framework open sourced, and the Mono project more tightly aligned with the .NET Framework for further compatibility.

I would also like to see Visual Studio ported to Linux.

[bug77]

Politics is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can get your hand on a stick. Microsoft no longer has the stick

[rob11311]

Wow! So Ballmer admits he was full of it and it was for the money. I wonder how many commercial customers will remember they were suckers?

[jbysmith]

It's still amazing though how many people love to take this quote horribly out of context. He was originally criticizing the restrictions of the GPL, not Linux, which technically are quite true.. granted a horrible choice of words.

[unixfan2001]

As this thread already seeks to prove, Ballmer will now join the likes of Hillary Clinton.
He's going to be either viciously called out for shit he did or said decades ago or attacked for being a "flip flopper".

Welcome to the 21st century! When humanity is well on the path to devolution and the resurrection of tribalism is eating up the last remote hope of reason.

[boxie]

I do like Microsoft's new open source direction - I choose to see it as being a good thing.

I can forgive past transgressions (but not forget them).

I am also pretty sure that we all saw the "we did it for the money" thing as it was happening - after all it is $ that makes a corporation tick. But you cannot attack an idea forever and developers like sharing their work - and today we have more open source code than ever before.

If anything that fight made the whole Open Source ecosystem better.

[bug77]

As this thread already seeks to prove, Ballmer will now join the likes of Hillary Clinton.
He's going to be either viciously called out for shit he did or said decades ago or attacked for being a "flip flopper".

Welcome to the 21st century! When humanity is well on the path to devolution and the resurrection of tribalism is eating up the last remote hope of reason.

Well, he did say Linux was cancer. And after some years, despite Linux not changing, he says otherwise. If that's not flip-flopping, what is?

[computerquip]

Steve Balmer is so full of shit... they did not make a "ton of money" from treating Linux like cancer. How did he even test that idea? Microsoft is still hurting from the Steve Balmer days... I don't understand why anyone would appreciate his opinion.