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GNU is Not Unix

Merill Lynch on Y2K: good for Free Software 26

Posted by sengan from the IBM-hiding-in-every-article-(suspense!) dept.
Nouvelles Neuves Linux quotes Merill Lynch as stating: "When all the smoke around the year 2000 has finally cleared away, the survey suggests there will be a shift away from the Windows-based client server environment. Within a 3-year time scale, the majority of users are expected to have moved to a network computing platform, with Java applications taking a more dominant role. The survey also notes that Linux is becoming an important industry trend. What is missing is an industry leader pushing open software towards the mainstream, but Merrill Lynch expects that by mid-year IBM Corp may slip into this role, offering Linux service and support. This slide towards open source has been backed up by Sun Microsystems making Java in part open source. According to the survey, the outcome of these changes could, in time, have as drastic an effect on software pricing as the advent of microprocessor did on hardware pricing." Seperately, on last Friday's Wall Street News with Louis Rukeyser, the small caps investor said she was not investing in Software Companies because most companies would want to stay with software they knew rather than installing new products until 2000.
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Merill Lynch on Y2K: good for Free Software More

Merill Lynch on Y2K: good for Free Software

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  • Meryll lynch *has* been wrong about computers before, espically about Microsoft being aquired by IBM, remember that? =P


  • Which company has a signed paper from MS saying it won't enter the Unix market?
  • Considering Merrill is very much a Microsoft shop, the interesting question is are they going to join the party or stay with MickeySoft?
  • I don't think Microsoft will ever recover from OSS, when (if? nah...) it hits em in the ass. Just look at their bread and butter suite, Office. Only small OEM's distribute "non-Office" suites because they don't qualify for massive MS discounts, and they're too small to worry about pissing MS off by selecting say Lotus or WordPerfect.

    When the industry says "enough" to yearly changes in Office file formats Microsoft will have trouble enough, but if Microsoft loses the choke point called Windows then their apps will suffer also.

    Most people use Microsoft products because it is harder not to. Just TRY to work in a mixed-app group with someone using FrontPage, or Office. Lots of deadline-challenged apps will mess your HTML a little bit, but FEW GO OUT OF THEIR WAY like FrontPage. To see what I mean, open HTML containing imagemaps and see it your code "upgraded" to imagemap "bots" that ONLY work on FrontPage-compatible servers. You can get some of these bots for UNIX, but they are not supported even if you pay $, and besides MS server bots leave amazingly big security holes for some d00d to exploit...
  • No, not from Dune ;-)
  • I pay $34.95+cable bills per month for my cable modem..

    No per-minute fees.

    :)
  • Just about every new computer out these days has a (bleepin') WinModem on it. Those things are worse than useless.

    When windows users become Linux newbies, they will think something is wrong with Linux because their modems don't work - and they worked fine before on Windows.
  • Um... I didn't see this particular episode of
    Wall $treet Journal, but I think the post was
    referring to a _guest_ on the show.

    Just FYI...
  • Within in a week after the certification tests are released a company such as Trancender will release a Become *nix Certified in 24 hours. MSCE is a joke... people might be certified but all it proves is that they can read and memorize. After working first hand with several of these certified persons it becomes painfully obvious that there is something seriously wrong with the entire certification process. Of course, your mileage may vary.

  • the idealist that support "open source" will not last long is such an environment unless they make concessions.

    And yet they're still here, sans concessions. Hmmm... something must be wrong with your logic.

  • This all sounds good, but does anyone really believe that the computer industry will truly embrace a trend that reduces their profits?
    Granted, companies like Netscape have been forced in the past to give away their software, but remember that Netscape's true profit base has always been in their server software, which remains highly priced. High-end server applications will certainly never be free, and I suspect that as Linux becomes standardized, client applications will also begin to be charged. It IS possible to distribute Linux applications without source (as many companies such as id Software do, for good reason). After gaining favor with the rapidly growing Linux user-base, companies will probably begin shifting over to commercial products once again... after all, the most important goal of any company is money for the board and shareholders - the idealist that support "open source" will not last long is such an environment unless they make concessions.

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