[0:00]look at Microsoft. They're claiming that they're uh trying to merge them in Windows 8. They're lying. They're not. They're full of shit. From an OS perspective, they just suck. In 2001, Linus Torvalds said something that made Microsoft so angry, they spent the next two decades trying to prove him wrong. He called them a threat to everything open source stood for. He said their love for Linux was a lie, that their promises meant nothing, and that the second developers let their guard down, Microsoft would do what they've always done: take control, lock it down, and make it theirs. The tech world called him paranoid, bitter, stuck in the past. By 2018, Microsoft was posting Microsoft loves Linux on billboards. They open sourced.net, they bought GitHub, they built Windows subsystem for Linux. Every tech journalist on the planet wrote the same story: Linus was wrong. Microsoft had changed. The wars were over. But in 2024, something started happening that nobody in the mainstream wanted to talk about. One by one, every single thing Linus warned about started coming true. Not because Linus is some kind of prophet, but because he'd been watching Microsoft operate for 30 years. And once you understand how Microsoft actually works, their "we love open source" era stops looking like redemption. It starts looking like something else entirely. Let's go back. 2001, Halloween. Microsoft had just launched an internal campaign to destroy Linux. Leaked documents later called the Halloween documents showed the company's real strategy: identify open source as a threat, spread uncertainty, and make damn sure it never competed with Windows. Around that same time, then Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That wasn't a metaphor. That was the official position of a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Linus didn't blink. He fired back, saying Microsoft was the real cancer. That open source was the immune system, and that any developer who trusted Microsoft's promises would regret it. The media painted him as the angry guy who couldn't let go. Microsoft was the professional corporation. Linus was the loose cannon. For years, that story stuck. Fast forward to 2014. Satya Nadella takes over as CEO. Within months, Microsoft's entire tone shifts. Suddenly, they're talking about how much they respect open source. They're contributing to the Linux kernel. They're running Linux on Azure. They're launching Microsoft loves Linux campaigns at conferences. In 2016, they release Windows subsystem for Linux, letting developers run Linux directly on Windows.
[2:54]The tech world loses its mind. This is proof. Microsoft has changed. The old battles don't matter anymore. Then in 2018, Microsoft buys GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. GitHub, the largest platform for open source development in the world, is now owned by the company that once called open source a cancer. Linus stays quiet for the most part, but when asked, he's skeptical. He says it's fine for now, but that Microsoft has done this before. They play nice. They integrate. They make themselves essential. And then, when nobody's paying attention anymore, they flip the script. Almost no one listened. They said Linus was stuck in the past, that he didn't understand the new Microsoft. They said Nadella wasn't Ballmer, that this time, it was different. But if you actually go back and look at what Linus said in those years, he never said Microsoft couldn't change. He said they wouldn't, and the difference matters. By 2020, something interesting starts happening. Microsoft begins locking down pieces of Windows that used to be open. Features that were once optional become mandatory. Telemetry collection ramps up. You can't fully disable it anymore, even in pro editions. Then Windows 11 launches in 2021, and it comes with requirements nobody asked for. TPM 2.0, secure boot, a Microsoft account just to install the OS. You can't even set up a local user account without jumping through hoops or using workarounds. The justification, security. But developers start noticing something else: every update makes it harder to use Windows without being tied directly to Microsoft's ecosystem. OneDrive becomes harder to disable. Edge keeps reinstalling itself. Default apps reset after updates. Microsoft's response every time: we're protecting users. But Linus had warned about exactly this. He said the moment Microsoft controls the platform, they'll control the behavior, and users won't even realize it's happening until it's too late. Still, the mainstream tech press largely ignored it. Microsoft was the new good guy, remember? Let's talk about GitHub for a second. When Microsoft bought it, they promised hands-off management. They said it would stay independent, that open source developers had nothing to worry about. For a while, that seemed true. Then, in 2021, Microsoft launches GitHub Copilot, an AI trained on billions of lines of public code hosted on GitHub. Code that developers had uploaded under open source licenses. The problem? Copilot was proprietary, closed source, and it was being sold as a subscription service. Microsoft was taking open source code, feeding it into a black box AI and selling the output. Developers were furious. This was exactly the kind of thing Linus had warned about. Taking the work of the community, wrapping it in proprietary tech, and monetizing it without giving anything back. Microsoft's response: Copilot is fair use. The code is publicly available. We're not breaking any laws. Legally, maybe they had a case. Ethically, it was the clearest sign yet that the Microsoft loves open source era was just branding. Then we get to 2024. Microsoft announces a new feature for Windows called Recall. It's pitched as this amazing productivity tool. Your computer takes screenshots of everything you do, runs it through AI, and lets you search your entire history. Sounds cool, right? Except security researchers immediately found that it stores everything locally in an unencrypted database. Passwords, banking info, private messages, medical records, all sitting there, accessible to anyone with access to your machine. The backlash was instant. Microsoft pulled it, said they'd fixed it, and promised it would be opt in. But here's what matters: they tried to ship it. They were ready to enable a feature that records everything you do on your computer and stores it in plain text. And they were going to turn it on by default. Linus had spent decades saying you cannot trust a corporation with that kind of access. That once they have control, they will use it. And here was Microsoft, trying to do exactly that. The media covered the story, sure, but most outlets framed it as a misstep or an oversight, not as evidence of something deeper. Now let's connect the dots. Microsoft isn't just building Windows anymore. They're building the infrastructure layer for AI. They've invested $13 billion into OpenAI. They've embedded AI into Office, Windows, Edge, Bing, and Azure. And every single one of those AI tools requires you to send your data to Microsoft servers. Your documents, your emails, your search history, your conversations. In 2024, they start pushing something called Windows 365, a cloud-based version of Windows that runs entirely on Microsoft servers. You don't own the OS anymore. You rent it, and everything you do flows through their infrastructure. Linus warned about this 30 years ago. He said the goal was never to compete with open source. It was to make open source irrelevant by controlling the layer above it, and that's exactly what's happening. You can run Linux, you can use open source tools, but if the AI layer, the cloud layer, and the productivity layer are all controlled by Microsoft, then the operating system barely matters. By late 2024, something shifts. Developers who spent years defending Microsoft's transformation start asking questions. Why is telemetry still mandatory? Why does Windows keep overriding user preferences? Why are more and more features cloud dependent? The breaking point comes when Microsoft announces deeper integration between Windows and their proprietary AI models. Features that used to run locally now require cloud processing. Features that used to be free now require subscriptions. It's not loud. It's not dramatic. But veteran developers start saying the same thing: Linus was right. And when you actually go back and read what Linus said in 2001, 2008, 2014, and 2018, it's all there. He predicted the embrace. He predicted the integration. He predicted the moment when Microsoft would have enough control that user choice would become an illusion. Here's the part that should scare you. In early 2025, reports surface that Microsoft is exploring kernel level AI integration in Windows. That means the AI isn't just another app you can uninstall. It's baked into the core of the operating system. If that happens, there is no turning it off. There is no opting out. You either accept it or you don't use Windows. Linus spent his entire career building an operating system that puts users in control. Microsoft is building the opposite: an OS that looks like it gives you control, but actually makes every meaningful decision for you. And the wildest part? Most people still don't see it. They see convenience. They see features. They see integration. Linus saw the end game. So why didn't anyone listen? Because Microsoft is really good at this. They don't make sudden moves. They don't announce their end game. They move slowly, politely, always with a smile. They say they love open source, and they mean it, as long as open source stays small, fragmented, and non-threatening. The moment it becomes a real alternative, the gloves come off. Linus knew that because he'd seen it happen before, to Netscape, to Java, to every competitor that ever got too close. The difference this time is that Microsoft isn't trying to destroy Linux, they're trying to make it irrelevant, and they're succeeding. Linus Torvalds was right, not because he hated Microsoft, but because he understood them. He understood that a corporation's job is to maximize profit and control, that loving open source means nothing if the end game is locking users into proprietary ecosystems. He warned us in 2001. He warned us in 2014. He warned us when they bought GitHub, when they launched WSL, when they started talking about AI everywhere. And we called him paranoid, but every single thing he said would happen is happening right now. The telemetry, the cloud dependence, the AI integration, the slow, quiet shift from user control to corporate control. The only question left is, will we listen this time, or will we keep believing that this time it's different? Because if history has taught us anything, it's this: Microsoft doesn't change. They just get better at making you think they have.
