The EU court case against Microsoft, with FSFE and the Samba team fighting the good fight, was also a major step in getting there.

It was one of the "first few major cases" in the EU against tech, and the testimonies from the open source side had been great in explaining to the judge just what they wanted (and almost as important, what they didn't want at all, despite Microsoft claiming otherwise)

Then Microsoft got a fine by day and tried to play the force card by refusing to pay for a while.

https://fsfe.org/activities/ms-vs-eu/ms-vs-eu.en.html

https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2011/05/27/samba-case-hearing...