Back in 2002, Jim Allchin was co-president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division and was, in his own words, "scared" of the momentum behind Linux, as noted in an email [PDF] sent to several of his direct reports.
Why scared? Because Windows was starting to lose to Linux:
My conclusion: We are not on a path to win against Linux. We must change some things and we must do it immediately. The current white papers, etc. are too high level and they are not going to cut it.
So what did Allchin do? As court documents in the Comes vs. Microsoft antitrust suit demonstrate, and as Roy Schestowitz pointed out on his blog Sunday, Allchin started to buy facts. Lots of facts.