Comment by Nursie

> FSF hated Microsoft because they released binaries without source code

I think that's a bit of an oversimplification - FOSS-leaning people had a pretty large set of reasons to dislike and distrust MS back then. "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" was a big one, calling linux/FOSS a cancer, their money and influence being used to fund the whole SCO debacle amongst other things. They were pretty actively evil, not just "closed source".

There was very good reason not to let MS gain de-facto control of an open protocol, because 90s and 00s microsoft would not have hesitated to find ways to use that dominance to screw the competition.