Linus On The Future Of Microsoft

An anonymous reader writes "There's a pretty good interview with Linus over at Good Morning Silicon Valley. The discussion seems focused predominantly on the future of proprietary software and what the tech landscape might look like if Microsoft's market share declines. 'Says Linus: I do not believe that anything can "replace" Microsoft in the market that MS is right now. Instead, what I think happens is that markets mature, and as they mature and become commoditized, the kind of dominant player like MS just doesn't happen any more. You don't have another dominant player coming in and taking its place -- to find a new dominant player you actually have to start looking at a totally different market altogether.'"

Comments

The trouble with this analysis...

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

...is that what happened in the past does not necessarily mean the same thing will happen in the future. Microsoft has so many built-in defense mechanisms and ways of controlling and monopolizing the market that there's no real end in sight for their domination of it.

Therefore, while I would like to believe that what Linus says is true, I sincerely doubt it will happen, at least not in the forseeable future.

Another MS occurring?

[Torgo's Pizza]

the kind of dominant player like MS just doesn't happen any more.

Tell that to Google.

Its all about The Bottom Line

[HaFBaKeD]

As long as Microsoft has the money to throw at new projects, it will be a VERY long time before it looses any significant market share. All the new and inovative technologies coming out to compete with Microsoft, are either later copied by them, or bought out by them. And when 95+% already uses MS and doesn't care about alternatives, they'll stick with them when it comes to new technologies.

Re:Future of Microsoft?

[node 3]

Easy - take a long hard look at IBM.

Exactly. When IBM's consumer software market dried up, they simply moved more focus onto their hardware.

MS will do the same, and when their consumer software market dries up, they'll focus on selling mice and keyboards for Linux and Mac PCs.

Re:1998 called

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, 1996 is on hold for you on line 2.

Something about a joke.

OS Competition Is Useless

[Jediman1138]

Here's the way I see it.

I understand completely why consumers, especially us, want there to be OS choice and
OS competition for everyone. Having three or four major OS's that end user every-day
Joes would use sounds like a Utopia. In fact, if I had it my way, there would be Windows,
Mac OS X, a revolutionary easy to use, yet powerful, Linux (shh.), and another free OS.

However, since most consumers don't know very much about computers, they're not going to
understand that their software doesn't work between OS's without hard-to-use (for them)
emulation software. With all of those choices, people are going to stick with the name
and software package they trust. Windows is going to win no matter what, unless Microsoft
goes the way of the dodo. The vast majority cannot handle the confusion and differences
between OS's, and they don't want to understand it. Even if somehow all the OS's could
use each other's software natively, then what would be the point in having more than one?

I hate to see one operating system dominate the market just as much as you guys do, but
there will always only be one primary operating system for (at least) the consumer market.
Whether it's always going to be Windows, I cannot say. I just know that people are happy
with standards, and they don't want to have to screw with migrating to something new, even
if they know it could be better for them.