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There Is No 'Microsoft of Linux'?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the because-seven-eight-nine dept.

SDenmark writes "Linux Format has an interview with Greg Mancusi-Ungaro, the director of Linux and OSS marketing at Novell. Asked if any company can become the 'Microsoft of Linux', Greg responds "Well, if we ever woke up one day and said 'Wow, Novell is the Microsoft of Linux' or 'Red Hat is the Microsoft of Linux', then the Linux movement would be over." Is he right -- is the open source world free from such possibilities? Greg also discusses the internal Novell migration to Linux."

4 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. on a related note... by jonastullus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    what exactly is Microsoft(TM) the microsoft of?

  2. It Depends by saberworks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It depends on what part of Microsoft you are comparing it to. If you are talking about their monopoly, probably not. However, if you are talking about their operating system loaded with a bunch of crap, ultra-slow, difficult to use, full of bugs, prone to viruses, then yes, there can definitely be a Microsoft of Linux. I think there already are a couple, but I'll leave the naming of names to others.

  3. Re:not until.... by eklitzke · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Perhaps not... but once upon a time, Microsoft did sell its own variant of Unix.

    --
    #include ".signature"
  4. Re:not until.... by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Microsoft will probably never release a Linux-based OS as they exist now, but the market presence for Linux servers will only increase. Eventually, forced by market pressure, kicking and screaming, MS will develop an AD client for Linux systems.

    And then old Bill will stand up. He'll look at all the Linux distributions spread out before him, he'll take out his wallet, and he'll say "Say, who would like be an exclusive parter with Microsoft?". And Linspire's hand will shoot up, waving back and forth wildly.

    Linspire will still be a separate company -- well, a wholly owned subsidiary of MS. That will be the case just to keep that nasty GPL and FOSS legal stuff sandboxed away from all the proprietary code MS will still develop. MS will release the Linspire AD connector, and you won't see any code for that, I tell you what. Next we'll see Linspire Server. Then we'll see MS Office for Linspire (not Linux, just Linspire). And there'll be DRM and Trusted Computing added to Linspire in just the right places and just the right ways to make it illegal to reverse engineer (or even look at).

    Windows is dead. Long live Windows!

    --
    The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.