Bangalore: Microsoft has been trying to keep up with competitors such as Apple and Linux-based android, but the race hasn’t been turning out too well, as a report from the Business Insider noted in a report. After all, it is a tough job to prove to those who grew up thinking something is bad, of the fact that they might be wrong.

Developers who believe in the “openness” of open source projects and distrust the software giant’s handling of competition in such regards are particularly hard for Tim O’Brien, Microsoft’s general manager of Platform Strategy to convince, and remembering Steve Ballmer’s comment in 2001 about Linux being “a cancer” doesn’t make things any easier.

O’Brien told the Business Insider “I've seen two dynamics going on-- one is a negative perception of the company based on biases from a previous life/experience.” The other, he says, is “just a lack of awareness of what we are doing in the platform that is interesting to a bunch of developers out there trying to build apps and make money.” “A lot of developers weren't even around during those days. They weren't out of grade school when a lot of biases were being formed,” he added.

But even if developers are biased, one factor that substantiates their stand is the fact that the desktop system is irrelevant to the cloud since most applications run in the browser.

Microsoft, (according to Business Insider’s report) has seemingly seen the change, and has since been going out of its way to embrace open source projects, giving special importance to Linux, and O’Brien says the company has changed so much that the misgivings about it have long been based on misconception.

Microsoft has already adopted a lot of technologies such as the Hadoop file system, and Java development tools, which are not native to the platform.

 A sure sign that Microsoft will be shedding a lot of its inhibitions, according to the report, were the indications of how Windows 8 OS will change the way applications for older version will work. What is yet to be seen though is how far Microsoft will go along with the flow of change.