It's not much of a business model if it is designed to harm another company instead of making money.
That's the problem with anti-capitalist liberals: They want to "get even" or take an emotional approach instead of make money.
Bingo. They also want to share America's wealth with the rest of the world for free, and when it comes to US intellectual property, open source (GPL) software like linux is the perfect vehicle for doing so.
It wasn't. It was designed as a university project, and then just posted on the web for any interested party.
... instead of making money.
It's aimed at producing a better product. In the markets they've targeted, it's become a much better product than most everything out there--that includes Windows. They haven't aimed all their interest at the Desktop yet, but it's coming.
That's the problem with anti-capitalist liberalschoice ostriches: They want to "get even" destroy everyone else to protect their market rather than compete.
Everything the opensource community does is not to hurt MS, its designed to interact with windows..