I’ve been using Linux distributions ever since I can remember.  It is arguably the most flexible operating systems in the world and it’s the foundation for many of the Virtual Appliances on the market today.  I’ve known some of the histories between Microsoft and Linux, but decided to dive in, research and give some good data points on

“How Microsoft started it’s for love Linux”

Enjoy the ride down memory lane, Rob

April 1975	Microsoft is founded. A young Bill Gates writes an open letter to hobbyists the following year against the culture of sharing code
Feburary 1998	The Open Source Initiative is founded. Eric S. Raymound becomes first president and Bruce Perens drafts Open Source Definition
June 2001	Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously says "Linux is a cancer" in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, and its never allowed to forget it
April 2004	The WiX toolset, which is originally developed by Rob Mensching in his spare time, becomes Microsoft's first open source project
2005	Microsoft begins to stick a toe in the open source pond by submitting its Microsoft Community License to the Open Source initiative for approval.
May 2005	Microsoft releases F#, a cross-platform, functional first, object-oriented programming language under OSI-Approved licensed, Appache 2.0
June 2006	Microsoft attempts to engage the community with CodePlex, an open source project hosting portal. In 2017, all projects are moved to GitHub
2006	Microsoft announces it wants to improve support for PHP on Windows Server 2003 and will submit any improvements under the OSA-approved PHP license
November 2006	Microsoft and Novell (owners of SUSE) agree to pay each other for potential IP infringement and Novell agrees to pay royalties on its open source software.
October 2007	Redmond creates a number of open sources licenses and has both the Microsoft Public License and the Microsoft Reciprocal License approved
December 2007	After a long legal fight, Microsoft has to give the Samba project proprietary documentation to enable Samba to work smoothly with Windows
July 2008	Microsoft starts contributing to Apache Hadoop HBase - an open-source, non-relational, distributed database - when it acquires the company Powerset
July 2008	Microsoft joins the Apache Software Foundation as a platinum sponsor and contributes a patch to help PHP work better with SQL Server
2009	Microsoft says it wants Linux to run as a "first-class citizen" on its virtual servers and contributes over 20,000 lines to the Linux kernel for Hyper-V
November 2011	The first stable release of Node.js for Windows, as Microsoft works with Joyent and Node.js author Ryan Dahl to achieve the port
2012	The company releases ASP.NET MCV, Razor and Web API under Apache 2.0 "to enable a move open development model", says Microsoft's Scott Guthrie
2012	A subsidiary of Microsoft called Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. is announced to "advance the company's investment in openness"
October 2012	A three-year project in the making, TypeScript - an open source programming language and JavaScript superset - is released under Apache 2.0
January 2013	Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. open VM Depot, a community-driven repository of Linux and FreeBSD virtual machine images for Azure
February 2014	Satya Nadella is appointed CEO of Microsoft. Announces Cloud First, Mobile First strategy and dethrones Microsoft Windows as a beating heart of the business.
October 2014	Microsoft's new CEO Satya Nadella declares that "Microsoft Loves Linux" and doesn't throw any chairs 🙂
November 2014	Redmond giant open-sources the modular development stack of .NET including ASP.NET, .NET compiler, .NET core runtime, framework and libraries.
September 2015	The company releases a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networkijng built on Linux called the Azure Cloud Switch
November 2015	Microsoft releases Visual Studio Code, a rich cross-platform source code editor, under the MIT license with support for extensions
November 2015	Red Hat and Microsoft make a deal to bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to it Azure cloud. Both also agree not to sue each other over patents.
December 2015	Microsoft brings Debian GNU/Linux to Azure cloud through a partnership with credatiiv and offers both Debian "Wheezy" 7 and "Jessy" 8
January 2016	Ubuntu Linux is previewed for the first time on Azure. Microsoft now has all the leading Linux distibutions available for its Azure cloud computing platform.
August 2016	Windows 10 introduces Windows Subsystem for Linux that makes it possible to run Bash and other Linux tools in an Ubuntu-based user mode environment. Also, Powershell on Linux is announced by Jeffrey Snover
November 2016	Microsoft joints the Linux Foundation as a Platinum sponsor and welcomes Google to the .NET Foundation and the Steering Group
July 2017	The first release candidate of SQL Server 2017 for Linux is announced and will allow a consistent data platform across Windows and Linux
December 2017	The company open-sources the Virtual Kubelet that connects Kubernetes
December 2017	Microsoft adds OpenSSH client into the Fall Creators Update for Windows 10 and says that it will contributeto the OpenSSH community