Since many of the people on this list are interested in Open Source software and its role in business, I would be interested to hear what people think of the following possibility.
You may recall that MicroSoft had become a giant well before many people had ever heard of the Internet. MicroSoft was in fact attempting to establish a proprietary Internet-like service to compete with AOL and other such services, whose names I can no longer remember. When it became clear that the Internet was going to dominate, Bill turned on a dime - bought a company that had a browser (I forget the name now), renamed it it Internet Explorer, and began a monopolistic attack on Netscape and any OEM that was shipping Netscape with their systems (this is a "Finding of Fact" by a U.S. Federal court). There are signs that Microsoft is (or at least were) using Linux to support some of their Internet services. Early on people detected "foot prints" that suggested this, and reported this through the Internet. I don't believe Microsoft ever denied it. I suspect the sure sign that Linux has arrived will come when MicroSoft release "MicroSoft Linux". It is certain to have a fully compatible Windows GUI environment that comes with it. This will be distributed only in binary form, and depend on Microsoft Linux package manager. There will also probably be at least an announcement for "Microsoft Linux Server" and the promise of an automatic conversion tool from Microsoft NT to MicroSoft Linux. Tis will convince many enterprise managers that were considering introducing Linux to wait for MicroSoft. How long will it be before the general public thinks MicroSoft invented Linux, and that other versions are just copy cats? === If you are only in Open Source software development because you think it is a way to beat companies like MicroSoft, I think you may be in for a disappointment. -- Creighton MacDonnell http://macdonnell.ca/ _______________________________________________________________ Don't miss the 2002 Sprint PCS Application Developer's Conference August 25-28 in Las Vegas -- http://devcon.sprintpcs.com/adp/index.cfm -- GnuDIP Mailing List http://gnudip2.sourceforge.net/gnudip-www/#mailinglist
