Hotmail Not So Homogeneous After All

After publicizing that it had switched its Hotmail servers from FreeBSD to 100 percent Windows, Microsoft admitted recently that a small fraction of Hotmail's servers (i.e., the ad-hosting and DNS servers) still run FreeBSD. The revelation somewhat embarrassed the company, which said that the affected servers use FreeBSD only for compatibility reasons and are still targeted for a transition to Windows. Microsoft haters welcomed the news but blew it a bit out of proportion: Some sites suggested that Microsoft bases critical portions of its business on freeware OS solutions—an accusation that clearly isn't the case.