"It is only fair, however, to point out that in 1999,
Microsoft’s market cap was north of $500 billion. Today, it
is around half that. In fact, since 2002, Red Hat’s stock
price is up 190 percent, while Microsoft has lost 20 percent,
though Microsoft has been paying a dividend since 2003. But, by the
measure of pure stock performance, open source wins hands down.
"From a revenue perspective, which one could argue is a much
more accurate measure of industry impact, the story is a bit
different. For its fiscal year ending February 2000, Red Hat booked
$42.5 million in sales. In FY 2007, it was $400 million - so 10x
revenue growth in eight years, but holding at less than half a
billion. Microsoft, in that same period, grew revenue from $23
billion to $51 billion""