Once upon a time, Microsoft was the bad guy. Steve Ballmer once called the Linux kernel “communism” and Linux a “cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” (Wikipedia citation) This is from the guy who once trounced across a stage yelling “Developers developers developers” In this era, Microsoft would do whatever was needed to maintain market share and keep open source software licensed under the GNU Public License or similar licenses from making the inroads at companies and municipalities.
My how times have changed. Ballmer has left and now regrets his statements on Linux. Satya Nadella has changed Microsoft’s stance and now embraces Linux. For example, Windows 10 now includes OpenSSH. There’s a Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows 10 that is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables natively. In other words, you can install Ubuntu (or Debian) in Windows 10. Talk about a crazy change in posture.
The new Microsoft even tries to help individual developers. Visual Studio now has a Community version licensed and free for individuals and small teams. Although the Enterprise version is still superior in some ways, the Community version is more than enough for small projects.
If you had predicted this in the early 2000s, you’d have been laughed out of the room. But here we are. Amazing.