In this article at ZDNet UK, Matthew Broersma interviews Open Source guru Eric Raymond about the challenge to Linux from Microsoft and how increased corporate backing of the upstart OS has significantly reduced the Microsoft threat. Broersma writes . . .

” . . . Last year Microsoft launched a virulent attack on the open-source movement, and particular the GNU Public Licence on which open-source software such as the GNU/Linux operating system is based. High-level executives called Linux a 'cancer' and a threat to intellectual property laws and capitalism itself . . . “

“If they had done that in mid-1998 . . . they might have buried us,” he told ZDNet UK in a recent interview. “I was seriously worried that was a possibility, that they would turn on the hype machine before we had enough success stories and enough corporate backing to be able to counter that . . . “

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