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Microsoft hatred is a disease

by on27 July 2009

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Linus defends Microsoft


Linux inventor Linus Torvalds said that Microsoft hatred is an Open Source disease which prevented the company from being a good decent citizen.

Last week Microsoft submitted 20000 lines of code to the Linux kernel, all licensed under the GPL. Torvalds said that he hadn't seen the code yet and he is not interested in driver code anyway. He said he was a big believer in "technology over politics". I don't care who the code comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for it to exist and he didn't have to worry about licensing issues.

“I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out,” he wrote in his blog.

Torvalds said that there were 'extremists' in the free software world, but that's one major reason why he does not call what he does 'free software'. Free software seems to mean that you have to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred. Torvalds said that he had no doubt that Microsoft's code release was for selfish reasons but that was how all open source code was written! “We all "scratch our own itches". It's why I started Linux, it's why I started git, and it's why I am still involved. It's the reason for everybody to end up in open source, to some degree,” he said.

No one complains when hardware companies write drivers for the hardware they produce. Neither is there muttering when IBM funds all the Power development, and works on enterprise features because they sell into the enterprise.
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