M$'s weapon is fear and there are endless possibilities for this to be
propogated: "If you have freeware in your organisation, you could have
viruses", "We won't support any infrestructure that mixes operating
systems not from a recognised vendor", etc, as well as playing on
ignorance about "cost of ownership" for Linux ("you need a Linux guru to
run it"), "lack of support" (that one always makes me laugh! Since when
did M$ EVER give support, as opposed to the 24x7x365 rapid support on the
'net form the Linux community ... for free!), "problems" with runnign
mroe than 1 OS on your machine (attacking LILO, etc) and most
importantly, indicating to vendors that if they supply machines with
Linux, M$ might not view them as a partner ... or they might have "supply
problems" with M$ products being "out of stock", etc.
Few people who need to make money from selling software or hardware are
willing to risk upsetting M$, and no court of government in the world can
change that because M$ doesn'[t actually have to DO anything, the fear of
losing your competitive edge is enough.
I would say that the worst thing that M$ could to to Linux is to start
attaching the MS logo to the freeware products! MS Tex? MS Gnome? MS
Perl? MS Apache? MS fvwm? or, worse of all MS Linux?
MS might decide to publically "embrace" the freeware movement ... taking
the technology and our efforts into it's products and MS-fying them.
How many of us would continue to supply our talents into the GNU and
Linux projects if it was going directly to MS for them to market and make
money out of?
Just some thoughts,
Brad
===
Bradley Kieser
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
-- Robert Heinlein
---Michael Jinks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> My boss told me yesterday about an article (he didn't say where he saw
> it) which said that Linux was the only non-M$ operating system to gain
> market share last year. The same article said that this fact hasn't
> been wasted on our good friends at M$, and that a whole new round of
> nastiness is expected from M$ as a counter to Linux, including
> punishments for resellers who get caught installing Linux on their
> machines.
>
> Naturally, I thumped my chest and said "Let 'em try," but I do wonder,
> if M$ did decide to go after the Linux community in force, what might
> they be able to do to us? Anything? They couldn't come to my office
> and start taking down my servers, obviously, but what about making the
> market a difficult place for Linux to expand?
>
> Until recently, Linux was such an outside-the-market operation that it
> would hardly matter, but these days it seems like RedHat & Friends are
> eyeing the business community and other traditionally M$-dominated
> camps, and we all know what can happen to a better-qualified, more
> efficient OS when it comes up against the big boys.
>
> Just wondering what other more experienced heads are thinking.
>
> -m
>
>
> --
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ARCHIVES!
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