Microsoft's Reaction to OSS Adoption

inode_buddha writes "Eric S. Raymond has the eighth "Halloween" memo available here. It looks like Microsoft is really beginning to notice the national and corporate movement towards FS/OSS, and is reacting accordingly."

Comments

Re:ZDNet is saying the same thing

[aardvarkjoe]

In other news, regedit.exe doesn't work on Linux either.

Hey, Reality Master -- virtually all commonly-used types of programs, with the exception of games, are available for Linux. For most business use, where games aren't much of an issue, it makes a perfectly good substitute. The examples you picked are rather weak.

Neither MS nor ESR are important anymore

[bgfay]

This memo and ESR's idiot commentary have convinced me once and for all that, when it comes to GNU, Linux, and Open Source, neither MS nor ESR matter anymore if they ever did.

MS makes their software and lost of people use it. If they make Office for Linux, lots of people will use that until OpenOffice shows itself to be much better. Meanwhile, those who run Linux will continue to run Linux and (like me) will switch their parents, friends, and children over to Linux so that we don't have to do tech support for family Windows machines.

ESR will continue to rant and rave like a frothing maniac until people stop listening. Reminds me of software that falls out of use because it is a remnant of the past and hasn't kept pace with how things are today. ESR will be replaced by someone else who won't sound like a high school freshman.

Until then, I'll just keep learning Linux.