Meet Bill Gates, the Man Who Changed Open Source Software

This headline is misleading. Article is about, "How Bill Gates changed Microsoft's perspective about opensource software.".

What a load of crap.

He changed open source software because of one meeting in 2008?

Maybe he changed Microsoft, but I don't buy the idea he is "the man who changed open source software." Nothing in the article convinces me otherwise.

Overblown, linkbait title (and it IS the original Wired title, not the fault of the submitter).

So as evidence that Microsoft changed Open Source Software, the example of Azure was given, having built-in support for some open-source platforms.

However, this is a reaction that didn't change anything: Windows Azure came after Amazon's AWS. The business of hosting your own software was already shifting to the cloud in a big way. Azure isn't even that successful anyway, being used more for keeping Microsoft's customers from switching from their own Windows servers to the more convenient EC2 (and it's children, like Heroku), which is cheaper and better if you're running Linux.

Microsoft also hasn't stopped attacking Open Source. They're just taking the indirect approach of threatening companies that rely on open-source, making them pay royalties, with the ultimate purpose being to make open-source software more expensive then their own alternatives. They also can't attack open-source directly, as other big companies rely on it (e.g. IBM).

Also, taking a good look at their strategy regarding Open Source, you can clearly see that it's all for marketing and defensive purposes (i.e. doing the minimal amount of work required for them to be considered open-source friendly, but without actually being so). For instance, they open-sourced ASP.NET MVC, but not Razor.

Baby steps, my friend. Microsoft is a big company, and getting everyone and every project to buy in is a complex and political process. They're not going to switch to open source overnight. The very fact that they're working and contributing even a little is a good step.

It's too early to tell where this will go, but I'm willing to hear them out with cautious optimism.