Time was when Microsoft executives thought nothing about publicly dissing open-source software as distinctly un-American. Everyone has their pet theories. Some even drew a direct line back to the company's early days dating to 1976, when co-founder Bill Gates published an open letter chiding hobbyists for using Microsoft's Altair Basic program without paying for the product. By the time open source began gaining notoriety in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Microsoft saw a threat to the way it sold software and services and went on the PR offensive -- with no small amount of hyperbole. ''Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer,'' former Windows chief Jim Allchin famously quipped in 2001. ''I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business.''