Microsoft, at one time the biggest opponents of open source, is now not just supporting it but in fact, is jumping directly into it. Most of the people from the open-source community still remember Bill Gates's remarks in an interview comparing open source developers with communists. Even Steve Ballmer, the successor of Bill Gate at Microsoft, has similar thoughts during his whole tenure as CEO. In 2011, Steve Ballmer said that "Linux is cancer". But Satya Nadella, the current CEO, has taken a 180-degree turn and not just says that "Microsoft loves Linux" but now Microsoft is keenly working to bring its own products as open source.

Last week, Microsoft has announced that it will provide now open-source the very foundation of .NET including ASP.NET, the .NET compiler, the .NET Core Runtime, Framework, and Libraries, enabling developers to build with .NET across Windows, Mac, or Linux.

This will not only allow millions of developers to build websites and other large online applications in free code but it also allows them to run on computer servers that use its own Windows operating system or any other machine equipped with Linux or Apple’s Mac OS.

However, this doesn't just happen suddenly. This change has been coming for years despite the disliking for Microsoft CEO. They foresee that open source is a big threat to Microsoft and Windows. They know that Microsoft should not just oppose open source and Linux. They need to accept this reality and it is because of that realization in 2008 Microsoft platform technology strategy director said that Microsoft is focused on helping customers and partners be successful in today's heterogeneous technology world through open source. In 2011, Microsoft also saw that Cloud technology was going to be built around Linux.

Today, developers who use the .NET platform have to use a server environment that does not have what Linux has. They are stuck with a generation-behind technology.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President at Developer Division, Mr. S. Somasegar, says that “With these releases, we are broadly opening up access to our industry-leading platform and tools to every developer building any application in today’s mobile-first, cloud-first world. No matter if you are a startup, a student, a hobbyist, an open-source developer, or a commercial developer, and no matter the platform you are targeting or the app you are creating, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Online, .NET, and Azure will help you be successful.”