What a tangled web Microsoft weaves – with open source powering Hotmail

NewsFactor Network writes: “Back when Microsoft purchased the free e-mail company Hotmail Corp. in 1998, not only did it get the wildly popular company’s huge base of users, it also got access to the mail technologies that allowed the service to continue running smoothly. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Hotmail relied heavily on the Free BSD open-source operating system — making the software giant something of a hypocrite. A spokesperson for Microsoft recently said that Hotmail still runs BSD Unix despite the company saying that it had long since removed it in the past..”