Tech giant Microsoft has announced that it is finally joining the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member. Microsoft, which built its tech empire based on closed-course proprietary product, has been opening up its business to embrace an open-source platform. As a matter of fact, the company is the top organization with the most contributors on Github.

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It is important to note that about 15 years ago, Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer labeled Linux as "a cancer." Microsoft's decision to join Linux may have been unimaginable back then. However, as the tech community is slowly opening up to the idea of an open-source platform, and so is Microsoft.

Microsoft's decision to shift to a more open-source platform started when Satya Nadella took the reins of the tech giant. Nadella played an instrumental role in open sourcing Microsoft tools such as PowerShell and Visual Studio Code, as well as the JavaScript engine which is at the heart of Microsoft Edge, its flagship Internet browser.

According to The Verge, Microsoft's decision to partner with Canonical to bring Ubuntu to the Windows 10 platform shows just how serious the company is about embracing the open source environment.

Following the company's acquisition of Xamarin as part of its effort to push its mobile app development division, Microsoft released Xamarin's SDK and developer tools into the open source crowd. Microsoft also open-sourced the SQL Server to Linux.

Given the long rivalry between Microsoft and the open-source community, some analysts believe that there will be hints of hostility towards Microsoft now that company is part of the Linux Foundation.

In a statement acquired by Tech Crunch, Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin said, "There will be some skepticism but that will be from a smaller group. There is an anti-establishment in open source. That's natural."

Some notable Linux Foundation Platinum members are Cisco, Huawei, Intel, IBM, Qualcomm, and Samsung.