On Linux's 20th anniversary, recounting past slights from Microsoft

"Cancer" or not, Linux is still here and thriving

The mythical "year of the Linux desktop" still hasn't come, and may never, but on the 20th anniversary of Linux the free operating system's proponents threw a party to celebrate its success and scoff at past attacks launched by Microsoft, its biggest rival.

Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin - known among Network World readers for saying that bashing Microsoft is "like kicking a puppy" - used his keynote at the LinuxCon conference in Vancouver to recount past slights from Microsoft and explain how wrong they were, one by one.

IN PICTURES: The oddest places to find Linux

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The mythical "year of the Linux desktop" still hasn't come, and may never, but on the 20th anniversary of Linux the free operating system's proponents threw a party to celebrate its success and scoff at past attacks launched by Microsoft, its biggest rival.

Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin - known among Network World readers for saying that bashing Microsoft is "like kicking a puppy" - used his keynote at the LinuxCon conference in Vancouver to recount past slights from Microsoft and explain how wrong they were, one by one.

IN PICTURES: The oddest places to find Linux

Noting that taking potshots at Microsoft "is pretty much my job," Zemlin presented a slide deck (it probably wasn't in PowerPoint) that included all the go-to quotes Linux fans use when they describe how evil Microsoft is. The list included Steve Ballmer's "Linux is a cancer" remark from 2001, Bill Gates insulting the GPL free software license and Craig Mundie saying Linux wouldn't be "successful in building a mass market and making powerful, easy-to-use software broadly accessible to consumers."

Microsoft recently produced a video wishing Linux a happy 20th birthday, and Zemlin took issue with that, too.

The Microsoft video, while mostly positive, says Microsofties felt Linux ideas were "childish," and asks "what happened?" to make Microsoft and Linux rivals.

"Could it have been... you called us cancer?" Zemlin said, drawing laughs from the audience.

The Microsoft "Happy Birthday, Linux" video also neglects to mention that Microsoft is still using its patent portfolio to undermine Linux-based technologies, particularly Android, Zemlin said.

"They're still up to the same old stuff," he said. But, "it's interesting to look at this stuff, the FUD and naysayers, and how Linux has overcome all these things."

Zemlin poked fun at himself for wrongly predicting in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 that "this is the year of the Linux desktop," but touted Linux's success in server and Web-based computing.

Although Linux hasn't displaced Windows in desktops or in traditional enterprise server workloads, the free software dominates Web servers, supercomputers, stock exchanges and more.

LONGEVITY: 20 years of Linux: Then and Now

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, who spoke after Zemlin, argued that Linux is the "default choice" for new types of workloads.

"Companies like Google would not exist today were it not for Linux," he said. "These business models only work if you can start them and get the innovation going cheaply."

Even Microsoft has become a frequent contributor of code to Linux, because it's trying to get its own Hyper-V virtualization technology into the kernel.

In that sense, Zemlin said Ballmer was partially right when he called Linux a cancer.

"Ballmer did turn out to be right on this one," Zemlin said. "Once Microsoft made their initial contribution, the contributions started to spread... With the 3.0 release, Microsoft is actually one of the top contributors to the Linux kernel."