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by jorgecastillo 4696 days ago
Even Apple has published plenty of open source code (non GUI stuff). Microsoft doesn't make significant open source contributions, because they don't get open source or because the only thing that makes them valuable is their huge desktop market share.
2 comments

Even at Microsoft there are several open source projects (though maybe fewer than you'd hope for a company their size). See F# for one compelling (IMO) example. And it's not the same thing, but Microsoft publishes way more research than the other tech giants.
I am not defending Microsoft actions (even if they make some few open source contributions).

I just said that Google Achilles' heel is in another place and because we have a bias in favor of free software we are not seeing the big picture clearly.

I have no bias in favor of free software. I do think open source is awesome. I do think open source UNIX-like systems are awesome. I do think open source programming languages are awesome. With all this said I use whatever software I like and can afford. I don't think open source software is inherently better, it is inherently more awesome but not necessarily better. My favorite desktop OSes are OpenBSD, OS X & Linux, I am only using Linux currently. My favorite GUIs are Cocoa & KDE.