… in the short run there’s been no greater contributor to the
gains of open-source software than Microsoft itself.
In the case of Windows it took a long time for most folks to
notice, primarily because they had no basis for comparison. People
either assumed that general protection faults were a normal part of
computing or that their own mistakes that were causing the
problems. Software developers and computer professionals knew
better and were the first to look at Linux and other OSs in their
search for stability.