This series looks at the best free and open source alternatives to products and services offered by Microsoft. But many developers remain hugely sceptical about Microsoft and their apparent shift to embrace open source. And they have partnered with Canonical, the developers of the popular Ubuntu distro. They have made acquisitions such as Xamarin to help mobile app development, and GitHub a hugely popular code repository for open source developers. They have also made investments in Linux development, server technology and organizations including the Linux Foundation and Open Source Initiative. For example, some of their code is open sourced. However, in recent years, there has been a partial shift by Microsoft to embrace the open source software paradigm. The campaign was widely criticized for spreading misinformation. Microsoft also initiated its “Get the Facts” marketing campaign from mid-2003, which specifically criticized Linux server usage, total cost of ownership, security, indemnification and reliability. Back in 2001, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously tarnished Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches”. Their battle with Linux stretches back many years. Microsoft’s stance for decades was that community creation and sharing of communal code (later to be known as free and open source software) represented a direct attack on their business.

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