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Linux To Ring Up $35B By 2008

Posted by michael on from the money-in-the-bank dept.

al@opensourcebrowser.com pastes "For a theoretically free operating system, Linux is -- and will continue to be -- a cash cow, a research firm said Wednesday as it predicted the OS will bring in more than $35 billion in revenues by 2008. Framingham, Mass.-based IDC said that overall revenue for servers, desktops, and packaged software running on Linux will reach $35.7 billion in the next four years."

7 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. BUT WINDOWS IS CHEAPER!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    GET THE FACTS!

  2. $358 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I saw $358 and was not surprised.

  3. Re:Karma points to.. by goon+america · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the article:
    The numbers are higher than earlier estimates by most analysts, in part, said IDC, because it changed it methodology to account for not just Linux on new hardware, but also Linux that's redeployed on existing hardware, and even cases when the open-source OS is used as a guest operating system, such as in a server partitioned with virtualization software to run multiple OSes.

    So, not only are they counting the hardware that linux is running on as being "spent on linux," they're also counting existing hardware on which linux will be installed as being "spent" on linux as well.
  4. Is it much? by asac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft will earn $38 bn in 2005.

    IBM received $23.2 bn in 2004.

    How will those figures look in 2008?
  5. Kinda misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They're counting money for hardware that would have been spent anyway, regardless of what OS is running on it. It's like a car company taking credit for $35 billion spent on gas. In the end, if I don't buy a Honda, I'll buy a Ford and spend money on the gas regardless.

    The only credible argument is that less will be spent on hardware supporting Linux than would be spent supporting other operating systems. Perhaps, that's an arguable point. But even then, the cost difference would not be $35 billion.

  6. I see they discovered the secret formula!! by Dano+Watt · · Score: 5, Funny

    You know, the three step program.

    1) Distribute OS for free
    2) ???
    3) Profit!


    All successful companies follow it, and so far, it hasn't failed yet.

    In other news, beating dead horses has reached an all time high.

  7. Lots of projects are "funded" by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you look at the kernel, pretty much all the core kernels are IBM/Redhat/Suse workers. GCC (which BSD users also use) have lots of redhat people in their lists. Lots of gnome hackers are paid to (project Utopia in Novell, Sun and Redhat, etc). Openoffice is not something that a couple of geeks can do in a weekend too. X.org has keith packards who did lots of work. KDE has several Suse/Mandrake/Lindows contributions. There're Freebsd hackers too, etc, etc etc..

    OSs programmers probably won't see money, but instead companies hire people to work on their projects and they give you the code (lots of times those people are guys who were one of the main developers of the project and they got hired)
    Which is fair. We give them our work, they got money, and they hire people to work on our projects and release the source of the modifications. We get better software, they get money.

    Well, my point is, "is not true that they give absolutely nothing back". NTPL, good SMP support, latest improvements in the incoming GCC 4.0, Gnome usability, Gnome accesibility from the Sun guys, openoffice...there're LOTS of things that wouldn't have happened without those companies.