Lee Gomes of The Wall Street Journal Online reports that Microsoft's efforts to vilify Linux and other open source software appear to be backfiring, with the campaign drawing criticism from legal experts as well as unifying the movement's often-fractious group of leaders. Gomes writes . . .

“The initiative has included speeches and statements in recent weeks by Microsoft officials, and reached a crescendo of sorts in a recent Chicago Sun-Times interview with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, in which he called Linux 'a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual-property sense to everything it touches' . . . “

“The Redmond, Wash., company appears to be fighting an uphill battle, since open-source code has become important for a growing number of companies.”

“One of them, in fact, has been Microsoft itself. The company's Hotmail free e-mail service for years used the FreeBSD operating system and the Apache Web server, both leading open-source programs. After buying Hotmail in 1997, Microsoft tried to replace FreeBSD with its own Windows software. Hotmail insiders said the company found Windows couldn't handle the heavy load, something Microsoft at the time declined to discuss . . .”

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