That's a very windows-centric view of the past. And with good reason too! Windows was utterly dominant back then. Still, Slackware was 7 years old by the year 2000. Running the 2.2 Linux kernel, compiled with open source GCC. Websites were cgi-bin and perl. Yeesh I've been running Linux a long time...
On the windows side, NSIS was an open source piece of tooling released that year. And I was writing Windows programs in Visual Studio with MFC.
> That's a very windows-centric view of the past. And with good reason too! Windows was utterly dominant back then.
Running servers on Windows? Yeah, a few people who didn't know better did that, but it would be completely inaccurate to describe Windows as "completely dominant". It ruled the desktop (and to a large extent still does), but it barely made it to parity with *nix systems on the server side before Linux (and FreeBSD in some cases) punched down.
It entirely depends on what you are counting, but I do think your comment is extremely misleading because Microsoft was important for business web servers in 2000. “a few people who didn't know better did that” is outright deceptive.
The dominant position of Microsoft’s proprietary IIS in the Fortune 500 makes Windows NT a lock for the most used operating system undergirding the Web servers -- 43 percent. But the idea that Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Internet presence is weakening isn’t supported by the numbers. Sun’s Solaris holds a clear second place at 36 percent, with all other operating systems falling into the noise level. Linux showed up at only 10 companies.
It is fair to say that in 2000 Linux was beginning its growth curve for web servers, and all other OS’s were starting their decline. I do note the Fortune 500 had a lot fewer tech companies back then (zero in the top 10) and churn has increased a lot (perhaps due to not following technological changes): “Fifty-two percent of the Fortune 500 companies from the year 2000 are now extinct.”, “Fifty years ago, the life expectancy of a Fortune 500 brand was 75 years; now it’s less than 15”.
On the windows side, NSIS was an open source piece of tooling released that year. And I was writing Windows programs in Visual Studio with MFC.