Microsoft could have killed off the open-source movement if it had tried in 1998, according to Open Source Initiative co-founder Eric Raymond. Last year Microsoft launched a virulent attack on the open-source movement, and particular the GNU Public License 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. The company has backed off from such statements since then, but Raymond said that if Microsoft had tried the attack a bit earlier it could have succeeded.
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