[tetris11]

You omitted:

> 1996: Version 2.0 of the Linux kernel is released. The kernel can now serve several processors at the same time using symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), and thereby becomes a serious alternative for many companies.

Linux had been around for half a decade at that point, and companies took note and reacted accordingly in 1998.

[pjmlp]

Until 1998 was a toy kernel, that barely worked except in very special cases, as someone that tried to use 1.0.9 with IDE CD-ROMs in 1994, or fighting with X modeline for the graphics card to display a barely working 800x600 in 1996, will recall.

Only after those guys stepped in, it matured to something that would compete with Solaris, during the 2000's dotcom wave.

[tetris11]

Ask yourself, why would large multinational corps step in to save a failing product that isn't their own, unless that product was a serious contender that threatened their bottom line.

[pjmlp]

To outsource development costs.