Microsoft's New Hurdles

gnuadam writes "The New York Times (free reg. required) is now running a piece about how the recently accepted settlement between Microsoft and the DOJ will affect the ever-so-loving relationship between them and the "worldwide community of volunteer programmers" who work on Linux and associated programs. Of interest, one interviewee quipped, "My prediction is that within three years time, Microsoft will `give away' its operating system to preserve its revenue in the applications business." Would Microsoft give away Windows to sell Office? Stay tuned." Update: 11/04 19:33 GMT by T : In related news, an anonymous reader writes "In an interview with Linux and Main Free Software Foundation General Counsel Eben Moglen reacts to Friday's U.S. v. Microsoft ruling and describes how it and 'trusted computing' will figure in formulating the next version of the GPL, expected in the next few months."

Comments

.Net Runtime negates the need for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft will probably start giving away a *nix-based .Net runtime first. Once you have all your products running on an abstraction layer, the OS becsome irrelevant.

Re:.Net Runtime negates the need for this

[sql*kitten]

Microsoft will probably start giving away a *nix-based .Net runtime first. Once you have all your products running on an abstraction layer, the OS becsome irrelevant.

Like this one you mean? Microsoft have been giving away the a .NET runtime and development environment (including source) for FreeBSD since last March.

Re:Never

[trentfoley]

Was anything mentioned about opening the source? I thought the idea was to just give away ths OS - Windows. That being said, it could remain closed. And, the "Crown Jewels", according to Microsoft, is the source code -- not the operating system itself.

Here's the article without registration

[Alethes]

Despite what the summary says, I wasn't prompted for registration, but thanks to news.google.com,
Here is the article sans-registration for those of you that are prompted.

Re:Never

[PCM2]

Microsoft will never give away the crown jewels to save the application side of the house.

I guess that all depends on what you mean by "crown jewels." Office has long been more profitable for Microsoft than Windows has. Makes sense, if you think about it. Most copies of Windows sold come as a bundle with new hardware, which means they were licensed in volume to the manufacturer at a deep discount. If you want to install Office on the same machine, however, you often have to buy it separately. A lot of the time they only bundle a stripped down office suite (Microsoft Works?)

If they were foolish enough to open their Windows source, all the links and hooks for Office would be out for everyone to integrate into Open Office. That would kill their app business within a couple of years.

I didn't see anybody mention opening the source to Windows. They just said "give away" the OS. Free beer.