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There Is No 'Microsoft of Linux'? 252

Posted by Zonk from the because-seven-eight-nine dept.
SDenmark writes "Linux Format has an interview with Greg Mancusi-Ungaro, the director of Linux and OSS marketing at Novell. Asked if any company can become the 'Microsoft of Linux', Greg responds "Well, if we ever woke up one day and said 'Wow, Novell is the Microsoft of Linux' or 'Red Hat is the Microsoft of Linux', then the Linux movement would be over." Is he right -- is the open source world free from such possibilities? Greg also discusses the internal Novell migration to Linux."
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There Is No 'Microsoft of Linux'? More

There Is No 'Microsoft of Linux'?

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  • not until.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by xirtam_work ( 560625 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @10:56AM (#15309013)
    There won't be a Microsoft of Linux until Microsoft decide to release a Linux distribution of their own, which is extremely unlikely to happen. Ever.

    • Re:not until.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Right... and Apple was never going to switch to Intel...

    • Re:not until.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by eklitzke ( 873155 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:55AM (#15309716) Homepage
      Perhaps not... but once upon a time, Microsoft did sell its own variant of Unix [wikipedia.org].
    • At worst it would be more an Apple of Linux, because Microsoft wouldn't be able to close the kernel source, and they would be unlikely to stick with NTFS. There's no reason to since other filesystems already included with Linux support ACLs, and they're superior to NTFS anyway.

    • Re:not until.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Bacon Bits ( 926911 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @12:04PM (#15309814)
      Microsoft will probably never release a Linux-based OS as they exist now, but the market presence for Linux servers will only increase. Eventually, forced by market pressure, kicking and screaming, MS will develop an AD client for Linux systems.

      And then old Bill will stand up. He'll look at all the Linux distributions spread out before him, he'll take out his wallet, and he'll say "Say, who would like be an exclusive parter with Microsoft?". And Linspire's hand will shoot up, waving back and forth wildly.

      Linspire will still be a separate company -- well, a wholly owned subsidiary of MS. That will be the case just to keep that nasty GPL and FOSS legal stuff sandboxed away from all the proprietary code MS will still develop. MS will release the Linspire AD connector, and you won't see any code for that, I tell you what. Next we'll see Linspire Server. Then we'll see MS Office for Linspire (not Linux, just Linspire). And there'll be DRM and Trusted Computing added to Linspire in just the right places and just the right ways to make it illegal to reverse engineer (or even look at).

      Windows is dead. Long live Windows!

  • on a related note... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jonastullus ( 530101 ) * on Thursday May 11, 2006 @10:57AM (#15309018) Homepage
    what exactly is Microsoft(TM) the microsoft of?

    • Re:on a related note... (Score:5, Informative)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:17AM (#15309269)
      DOS.
      Back in the day there were multible companies that made DOS and for the most part they were compatible with each other. Microsoft always had dominace but there were alternitives. PC DOS, DR DOS... Then when Windows Was released it was designed to run on MS DOS only (And had code that blocked other DOS varents causing some lawsuites in that case). So after time more and more programs used Microsoft Windows extentions to their application where there was more Windows then DOS. So the Microsoft of Linux would be like say Novel or Red Hat who has such a dominance on the Linux market that they feel free to add their own custom kernel and developers develop on it and Apps only work on Their Version. With no chance that it will work for other Distros with a more "pure" kernel. Of course this probably wont happen with Linux because of the open nature. But that is the Microsoft of Linux means. Getting so much control in the process and influence in developers that other products are forced to become toys.

    • What a great question (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mateo_LeFou ( 859634 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:30AM (#15309408) Homepage
      Sorry, guys... philosopher by training so I might get abstract here.

      Microsoft is the microsoft of software, obviously. What does it mean to be the "microsoft" of something, though? I think it means to provide a very specific service: hiding complexity. I'm reminded of Neal Stephenson's analysis of what the Windows startup routine looks like to the user, as against that of Linux. If you're used to a blue screen that says "Here comes Windows! Aren't you happy?" then the screen output while Linux starts up is going to look broken.

      What would it mean to hide the complexity of Linux? Ubuntu, Linspire, et. al. sorta do this, but note:

      Hidden Linux is not Linux. It's very nature is to be transparent. Linspire and Ubuntu are still Linuces b/c it is still possible to get in there and fiddle with the code. What they hide (or rather, de-emphasize) is simply the 'invitation' to come in and fiddle.

      So if being-microsoft means "making it easy to do the lowest-common-denominator things with software" then there will be one of those for Linux.

      But if it means "achieving the above by limiting what the user can do, and what she can modify" there cannot be one.

      • What does it mean to be the "microsoft" of something, though? I think it means to provide a very specific service: hiding complexity.

        That's true, but it's a very pro-Microsoft type of thinking.

        Refferring to the "Microsoft" of something would surely be more readily described as...

        Something performing the following actions:

        * Forcing people to do what it wants them to do (i.e. the threatening of OEMs).
        * Locking people into using its solutions (i.e. proprietary file formats, APIs, protocols).
        * Attempting to kil
    • The one OS to rule them all....

  • It's like slashdot's turned into some sort of linux site.

    No Apple stories in three days

    This is a tragedy!1!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Is he right? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DragonWriter ( 970822 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:00AM (#15309064)
    Well, it depends what you mean by "Microsoft of Linux".

    Essentially, the problem with this is its an analogy with too many unspecified terms

    foo:Linux :: Microsoft:bar

    There is no way to know what "the Microsoft of Linux" is supposed to mean.

  • "microsoft of..." (Score:3, Interesting)

    by poor_boi ( 548340 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:01AM (#15309067)
    What exactly does "the Microsoft of ..." mean? Does it mean you own IP rights to all of your major product lines? Does it mean you are the driving force behind the look and feel of your products? Does it mean you are the only one who decides what features go into your product? Or does it simply mean you have the biggest share of your particular product?
  • That's very true. And it's probably best if we keep it that way.

  • Open Source != Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guitaristx ( 791223 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:01AM (#15309072) Journal
    Asked if any company can become the 'Microsoft of Linux', Greg responds "Well, if we ever woke up one day and said 'Wow, Novell is the Microsoft of Linux' or 'Red Hat is the Microsoft of Linux', then the Linux movement would be over." Is he right -- is the open source world free from such possibilities?

    Linux is only a subset of what open source has to offer. There's much more to open-source than Linux. A pedantic note, maybe, but I'm tired of the "open source = linux" thinking that pervades the business realm and even leaks over into the IT realm.
    • Linux is only a subset of what open source has to offer.

      Just like open source is only a subset of what Free Software has to offer. ;)

      -linux zealot
    • Linux = trendy buzzword in IT. Businesses and large IT firms care about Linux for exactly two reasons: it's free/gratis, and everyone is doing it so they'd look like chumps if they didn't do it too. Remember some time ago someone offered Linus a huge chunk of change to release a version of the Linux kernel under a BSD license? What on Earth would anyone need a BSD-licensed version of Linux for, other than buzzword-compliance, when there were already *three* high-quality, stable, server-class kernels rele

  • It Depends (Score:5, Interesting)

    by saberworks ( 267163 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:01AM (#15309077)
    It depends on what part of Microsoft you are comparing it to. If you are talking about their monopoly, probably not. However, if you are talking about their operating system loaded with a bunch of crap, ultra-slow, difficult to use, full of bugs, prone to viruses, then yes, there can definitely be a Microsoft of Linux. I think there already are a couple, but I'll leave the naming of names to others.

    • Re:It Depends (Score:2, Informative)

      by gallwapa ( 909389 )
      It does depend, because I don't know what planet you're from, but my windows file browser (security aside) browses, opens, draws and refreshes faster than any flavor of Linux I've ever seen, in either GNOME or KDE.

      To call it "ultra slow" is akin to the same Linux zealots who in my mind sour many people's perception of GNU/Linux and other open source applications.

  • As big, but not as controlling (Score:5, Insightful)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:03AM (#15309096) Homepage Journal
    A linux company can certainly become huge, like Microsoft. But they'll never get the same level of control. One vendor can remain far ahead of the rest on features and support, but a competitor can easily appear with a completely compatible product.

    The only issue would be for proprietary software sold on top of Linux. That would hinder competition. But there will probably never be a proprietary killer app only distributed by one linux vendor on their own distro. And even if there was competitors today will be quick to create a similar application. Today it's not like the environment Microsoft grew up in.

  • Backwards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:03AM (#15309097)
    If any company starts making enough money by selling Linux distributions, that's not an indication that the movement is "over." It's an indication that the movement is "complete."

    By calling somebody "the Microsoft of Linux", perhaps they mean that one vendor is dominant enough to dictate industry standard practices, such as it once seemed would be the case with the Red Hat package manager. While it would certainly be possible for somebody to come along and push things in a certain direction, standards-breaking usually works against your best interests.

    Besides, the Linux desktop revolution is pretty much over anyway, isn't it? The vast majority of those who want a *nixy desktop can just buy a Mac these days. There will still be a large cult of die-hards runing Gentoo as their day-in and day-out personal workstation OS, just as there were those in the late 90's who would cling for dear life to their OS/2 and Amiga boxen, but it seems like it's been a couple years since there has been any real appearance of growing momentum behind putting Linux on everybody's desk.

    Linux these days is an incredibly well-respected enterprise OS... to the point that it has driven several "real" POSIX-compliant Unices out of existance. But as a desktop solution, it never really advanced beyond the playgrounds of serious geeks, and it doesn't really look to me like it ever will.
    • But as a desktop solution, it never really advanced beyond the playgrounds of serious geeks, and it doesn't really look to me like it ever will.

      I dunno. Looked at any of the more modern distros lately? SuSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, Libranet all spring to mind. I'm running Ubuntu as a desktop and while it's still behind OS X and Windows I'd at least call it 'competitive'. It's made great leaps and bounds since a year or two ago, and the new version is coming out very shortly which will probably put it yet another le

      • Re:Backwards (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Golias ( 176380 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:43AM (#15309561)
        Okay, let me be crystal clear here, because I'm not trying to start some "My Favorite OS Has The Biggest Dick" flame-war.

        I'm not saying that Linux desktop solutions are not good. Some of them are darn good. For certain users, it's a terrific choice.

        I'm saying that there isn't the rising tide of interest in it that their once was.

        Let's look at some of the forces behind people wanting a Linux desktop back around 1998 or so, and what has happened since then:

        1. An affordable alternative to Microsoft.

        Since Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the Mac has become more affordable while improving is several other important ways. Microsoft haters can pick up a $600 mini from their local store that does pretty much everything they want to do.

        2. Better security

        Okay, Microsoft still kind of sucks at security, but if you run an external firewall and keep your patches up to date, you're not nearly as vulnerable on a networked Windows box as you were eight years ago.

        3. "Free as in Speech"

        The fact that Darwin, the BSD Layer of OS X, is open source is enough for most people. It means that Apple is wisely subjecting the underpinnings of their OS to peer review and gaining most of the wins of using open source. A few hard-core Stallmansits probably feel very differently about it, but Free Software bigotry is not really enough to drive a popular movement.

        4. *nix at home

        OS X and various flavors of BSD provide plenty of opportunity for that, and even Windows has emulation tools. A would-be BOFH in training could learn an awful lot of what they need to know about *nix simply by monkeying on a Windows PC.

        5. New life to old hardware.

        "Old" hardware these days is pretty darn beefy stuff. When you can buy an XP-capable used PC or an OS X-capable used Mac for under $100, there really isn't a compelling reason to squeeze a little more life out of that old 386 in the garage.

        The value of the box that can't run one a modern commercial OS at this point is pretty much measured in the price and quantity of the metals used to build it, minus the cost of disposing of any hazzardous materials. (A number which is not always higher than zero.) Plus, when parts burn out, it's almost never worth the time and trouble to repair them.

        So my point is, while Linux has made some great strides to become more user-friendly than it was back in the day, the emergence of OS X and the improvements of Windows have taken away most of the reasons for people to switch.

        There is one home use for Linux which doesn't seem to be going away soon: Media Room computers!

        Every Windows solution I've seen costs a fortune and works like ass.

        I have a Mac driving my HDTV, and love it, but it's still a more expensive solution than a MythTV set-up would have been.

        • My media player runs windows... it's an Xbox, running XBMC on top of the inbuilt OS, which is what, Windows 9x embedded or something? Or did it end up being NT embedded? I always forget, because it makes no difference to me anwyay :)

          You could also use MediaPortal [team-mediaportal.com] on top of whatever Windows. I hear it's quite good, but I haven't tried it.

          • Most people I've heard from who hacked their X-Boxen to be Media systems used Linux to do so. Either way, XBMC is kind of a fringe player compared to MythTV, which I've seen in homes of people who never touched Linux prior to wanting a DVR solution.
            • I know it's all anecdotal anyway but everyone I know with a hacked Xbox has XBMC on it, and none of 'em run Linux. I have run Xebian on my Xbox but it was horribly unreliable (would lock up during loading daemons about 2 boots out of 3) and I didn't really need it so I haven't looked back since. XBMC is WONDERFUL.
    • Besides, the Linux desktop revolution is pretty much over anyway, isn't it?

      How about Ubuntu, "Linux for Humans", with their $10 Million or whatever in venture apital. Also Linspire. I wouldn't call the Linux desktop dead until people stop sinking money into it.

      (I also should say that I don't really "get" Ubuntu -- it doesn't really seem any easier/better/different than Fedora or any other traditional Linux Distro. I think maybe the people claiming massive user friendlyness are all coming from Debian or som

      • Besides, the Linux desktop revolution is pretty much over anyway, isn't it?

        I wouldn't call the Linux desktop dead until people stop sinking money into it.

        *sigh* I just knew I'd be pecked at from people who didn't actually pay attention to what I said.

        Where did I call the Linux desktop "dead"? Nowhere. It's alive and well. Go sing Kum Bah Ya with your friends knowing that some guy you never meet on slashdot does not hold the opinion that Linux is dead.

        Sheesh.

        • Woah, calm down pal. FWIW, I thought your post was right on target. Maybe I should have repeated my other post where I articulated that desktop investments like Ubuntu are pretty much doomed to failure and that while the Linux desktop is not "dead", it's not going to be a growth market anytime soon.
    • Besides, the Linux desktop revolution is pretty much over anyway, isn't it?

      Over in the U.S., yes. Actually that's being charitable--it never got started in the U.S. And I say that as a daily Linux user who could easily wipe Windows off his machine. Windows is entrenched and inertia will keep it going. OS X will have more impact on US desktops than Linux ever could, and even OS X will not deliver some knockout blow.

      I'm not so sure about other countries though. There are political reasons why other govern

    • I don't think I could count the number of linux gurus I've talked to that praise Nintendo for creating games that are accessible and fun for everyone to play, and then turn right around and complain about linux not penetrating the common at-home user market... and all I can do is blink in astonishment. C'mon guys, would it really kill you to have at least one distro that only required the user to pop it in the CD drive and answer a few simple questions?

      • Re:Exactly. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 )
        You mean like Ubuntu? Mandrake? Redhat? SLES?

        HELL, I think even Debian is up to that standard by now.

        The type of Linux you speak of has been available for a LONG time now.

        Now the Linux community has moved on to things like PVR-in-a-box or Studio-in-a-box.

    • Re:Backwards (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mardukvmbc ( 244275 )
      I just switched my home PC from XP to Linux recently. It's not just used by me, but my wife and sometimes by my 3 year old son. Here's my reasons for switching, in order of importance:
      1. Vista. I don't want to be forced into "upgrading" to Vista the way I was forced into upgrading to XP just so the new versions of software run. Why don't I want Vista? The ridiculous hardware requirements and the wacky Microsoft licencing issues.
      2. Security. I'm sick and tired of cleaning my system out of spyware and adware.
  • I hope one day there will be a Linux based software company that can boast 90% market share. As long as Linux remains OSS, what's to complain about? The Linux Massive company wouldn't be able to do stupid things like forego the inclusion of ODF in "Linux Word".

  • Different animal. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nijika ( 525558 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:05AM (#15309120) Homepage Journal
    That doesn't happen. Any time hubris starts to take a foothold in any one distribution of Linux people tend to switch until it calms down. This doesn't often result in much user pain, if they even notice.

    Not to point a finger at RedHat... Hell, why not... Anyway I felt RedHat was moving to a point where I felt it was pulling too many proprietary stunts (the updater, the "enterprise" crap, the fragmenting with Fedora, etc) so I switched to Debian. [Disclaimer: this is not a denouncement of RedHat, this was my personal choice, RedHat is still cool, but my leanings are to Debian right now]

    I don't know when or how, but if Debian ever starts to lose the balance I like, I'll just switch to Gentoo, or something. Or my own distro, or whatever.

    It's not like we're literally going to wake up one day to find that the Kerel has been made proprietary and all the software we use will suddenly become closed source.

    Microsoft of Linux as an analogy does not work.

    • I feel the same way about redhat that you do. I feel that redhat broke its covenant with the open source community when they terminated the free and stable version of its OS. Then again, since you've never been able to use a .0 release of redhat without horrible problems, I guess we've been doing their beta testing for them all along :P

  • not the same thing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by penguin-collective ( 932038 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:07AM (#15309150)
    It's not going to happen. Microsoft manages to keep its position by keeping the barriers to entry high through a bunch of approaches: aggressive marketing, bundling, tying, loss leaders, proprietary formats and APIs, and monopolistic practices.

    Open source is about keeping barriers to entry low. If a Linux company had 90% of the market, it would be because 90% of the market actually chose them freely, and they'd only keep that market share as long as they did a good job because anybody can take the system, fork it, and compete.

    (I know that Microsoft advocates often argue that people chose Microsoft freely, too, but it's clear that that's not the whole truth. The great majority of their users probably doesn't have a choice, either because they don't know anything else, or because they are locked in in some way.)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The idea that a Microsoft of Linux means the end of the 'movement' and that Linux, or the OSS movement is immune to monopoly domination and its attendant arbitrary actions and pricing are NOT the same. Linux could become ( in some mythical future world after Linus Torvalds passes the torch, or with corrupted governments injecting laws to halt open software, or whatever) an OS dominated by one monopoly player. And that would mean the end of whatever 'movement' existed. So it can happen, but it probably wo
  • .....why do people keep comming up with these silly ideas?

    Do they not understand the purpose of Free Software (in the flavor of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman)?
  • Can a company use monopoly tactics to artificially raise the price of a product, beyond its natural pricepoint, when that exact same product can be had for free (or by a competitor cheaply) with a bit of extra work?

    If you answer "YES" then you believe that a company could monopolize the Linux (or FOSS) market, regarless of free market competition. Somehow, I suspect that outcome borders more on impossible than highly unlikely. --M
  • I think Mancusi (and LFX) would have done better to go into the details about their "migration to Linux" effort. There really wasn't a whole lot of substance to the interview to draw any meaningful conclusions about... well... anything.

    I don't think Linux is ready for the mainstream desktop environment, specifically office functions. The desktop environment is still clunky whether you choose KDE or Gnome. It's improved incredibly, even over the last year or so. The pathetic (and sad) part of this effo

  • First off, Microsoft gained their monopoly through questionable and illegal means. They've locked customers into using their products (not just their products, but their LATEST products).

    If a company has 5,000 users and untold TB of .doc and .xls files the company is pretty much stuck with using Office for the rest of time. OO.o is great, but it doesn't exactly render .docs flawlessly.

    Linux is, by its very nature, incapable of enforcing such a thing is it not? It's open source, uses open standards (docum
  • There's a strange error in the summary. He doesn't say that it isn't possible, he says that if it happens Linux is pretty much doomed. That doesn't mean it couldn't happen. He's talking about the results, not the possibility, of one company rising to dominance.
  • ...or at least they want to be. Specifically, the group formerly known as Ximian, who for all practical purposes are in charge now.

    Look at their long list of projects that were started because of "Not Invented Here" syndrome, a known Microsoft tactic: GNOME, Mono, etc. etc. the list goes on and on.

    Ximian (Novell) are megalomaniacs and they want to take over the Linux space. Let there be no doubt about it.
    • Yeah let's look at your exmaples:

      GNOME, created because KDE was not free, nor legal. I am not sure if even RMS's forgiveness actually is enough to make it legal, but the point is moot now.

      Mono, a GNOME version of .NET. Regardless of your feelings about .NET, it is better that you can use on Linux than if Linux was shut out.

      Evolution, it was started before Athera, and having an outlook clone that allows connectivity to MS Exchange is a good thing.

      What else might you be going on about?
  • Bill Gates: How do you build Linux?
    Boy: You cannot build Linux. That's impossible. You can only realize the truth.
    Bill Gates: What truth?
    Boy: That there is no Linux. It is not you who builds Linux. It is Linux who builds you....

  • Commercial customers can bring intense focus on customer needs and an understanding of what mass market consumers want (and of how computer literate they are). In this sense, Linux could do with a sharp dose of the Microsofts if it wants to be more than a small niche on the desktop. Anything rather than the sense I get with some distros at the moment of navigating around a huge building site where everything is in beta and the place is run by whingeing developers who gon't give a stuff about Joe User. The "
  • If Oracle were to buy Novell or Ubuntu or some such, would that make them the "Microsoft of Linux?" My thought is no, not immediately but possibly over time, assuming they didn't botch the merger and stifle the creativity of their Linux team.

  • No Comparison (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ruben.gutierrez ( 913239 )
    In short, there will never be a "Microsoft of Linux" because the two ideas aren't even comparable. Microsoft is a corporation and Linux is an OS. Since Linux inherently exists in opposition to closed source software products developed by companies such as Microsoft, I don't see a comparison. Furthermore, Linux is just an OS, it's not the Open Source movement, which would only be the other possible comparison to Microsoft. That is, Microsoft is this huge international corporation with dozens of widely used

  • It would be nice in a way (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Toreo asesino ( 951231 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:42AM (#15309547) Journal
    I use Ubuntu Linux on a casual basis. It's nice; 90% the apps I could want, works with 100% of my hardware; no real complaints there.

    However, I believe I could sum up my feeling on this subject by outlining a common issue I run into...

    A classic conversation could be something like (not reproduced exactly):

    Me: "How do I get my back/forward mouse buttons to work in Firefox (like it does in Windows)?"

    Friend: "Er, what distro are you running again?"

    Me: "Ubuntu...whatever the latest is"

    Friend: "Ah. I don't know that one too well...try editing the X-config files"

    Me: "Ah, that big scary file that if you screw up renders the pretty GUI bit useless?"

    Friend: "yep."

    Me: "Well, never mind. I'll pass."

    I mean, just give me the one control-panel for crying out loud?! As much as I appreciate the freedom that comes with linux, sometimes it's just not just not worth the hassle! Maybe I'm not l337 enough when it comes to Linux, but I happen to also like standardisation when it comes to some things; system configuration being one of them.

    So there you go. Rantings of a Windows boy. Maybe one day I'll "make the switch", but not until I get my god-forsaken 5 mouse-buttons working without manually having to edit random config-files.

    Apart from that, it's all dandy! Thanks for listening.
    • "How do I get my back/forward mouse buttons to work in Firefox (like it does in Windows)?"

      The question can be reversed. Why doesn't Windows work like Firefox? Or, a different question can be posed: why don't you talk to your mouse vendor?

      All in all... you choose to NOT ask those questions. Now, F/OSS is flexible enough to provide you with an answer -- but you don't want to apply it.

      Random config files? No, but you may want to pay someone to make the modifications for you. F/OSS doesn't mean "free as in beer

  • Debian (Score:2)

    by booch ( 4157 )
    I've often said that Debian is the Linux of Linux distros. In other words, it's built very much in the same way that Linux is. No one entity owns it, it has a very distributed and open development process, and it's "more free" than most of the other popular alternatives. So I think in the end, Debian will be at least the basis for the majority of GNU/Linux deployments.

    That said, I'm not sure what the Microsoft of Linux even means.

    If he means having control of Linux, then I think he's right. A single company
  • Ponder this if you will...

    Microsoft has already said it plans on embracing some level of virtualization. I suspect this will be some form of "Vmware built into windows" approach. They do this and people want to migrate servers onto this platform (Why? Because they will offer amazing price incentives to get people on it of course) and start moving servers. They want to move linux and other *nix servers to it. Microsoft wants this to be easy for them so includes a linux distro they like and probably tailo
  • I think what you want to be is, in effect, like Switzerland - you want to be the people of unquestionable integrity.

    You want to be the people with the technical precision, the people who are neutral, but who are leaders.

    You don't want to stand on the sidelines; you want to take positions and take on issues, but you want to try and do it as an ambassador to the community.

    All Novell can do, and all Novell really wants to do, is state the facts of the situation, and advocate.

    Um, what is this guys stance? I mea
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Back in the day, when Red Hat was just talkng about going public, I always wondered why Microsoft never did a port of MS office to the LINUX/UNIX Patform. They did it for MAC and figured they had enough R&D money to be present on every OS of the day. I even thought "MS Linux" was just around the corner. I figured Bill Gates would be everywhere to take advantage of innovation from wherever it would emerge.

    Sigh....
    Linux Users... Rebel Scum!
    --Fan of the Evil Empire
  • GUI LINUX (aka SUSE) is moving towards Windows without DOS every day. No CLI. In the end the article headline is correct and Novell are doing just that. SUSE IS the WINDOWS of the LINUX World. ... that is why we use SLACKWARE or FREEBSD.

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