MANY READERS that are relatively new to Techrights (we started in 2006) may have missed the fact that 'explosive' Microsoft internal documents leaked, showing Microsoft's intention to cause infighting. This was one of Microsoft's openly-stated (at least internally) strategies against GNU/Linux and around that same time -- being well more than a decade ago -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, the father of MINIX (inspiration source of Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux) told the media: “A couple of years ago this guy called Ken Brown wrote a book saying that Linus stole Linux from me… It later came out that Microsoft had paid him to do this…”

"We need to co-exist with those who are willing if not eager to co-exist with us. Microsoft was never such an actor; it still isn't."Contrary to some media narratives (trying to fuel unnecessary feuds), Prof. Tanenbaum is no foe of Mr. Torvalds. "A multithreaded file system is only a performance hack," the former once told the latter. "I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error," he said separately. "Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)" (Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds, notice the smiley face!)

Here at Techrights we strive never to lose sight of the principal threats. In our Daily Links we include plenty of news about BSD; the picks contain a lot of Free software projects that aren't part of GNU and aren't part of Linux as a kernel. We need to co-exist with those who are willing if not eager to co-exist with us. Microsoft was never such an actor; it still isn't. The company is inherently incapable of cooperation and empathy because of its management and its sociopathic characteristics. ⬆

"We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger. --Jim Allchin, Microsoft Vice President