Open Source is more a result of simple economics than a revolutionary force. Software got to be so lucrative in the first place because in the old days (1975), there were only so many people to go around who understood these new computer things. Low supply + explosive demand = high value placed on the product.
With demand leveling off in recent years, the slowing amount of real innovation coming from the big software houses, and the number of competent programmers rising, it's easy to see how commercial software would become less valuable. The advantages of buying something (in economic terms the "marginal utility"), when you can download a high-quality equivalent for free, are simply no longer there.
The only way for Microsoft to "beat Linux" is to make something better. But that's also the only thing it will take. This isn't magic, it's Adam Smith.
I didn't see this mentioned in any of the other posts, but zipslack is a stripped-down version of slackware, usually available at the mirror sites where you find slackware. It comes as a.zip file and it's about 100MB uncompressed. It isn't missing much - perl, the usual libraries, gcc, etc. are all on there - but not much else. No X, no helpful crap you don't care about, and no RPMs.
The downside: it's distributed as a UMSDOS filesystem. This means that you have to find a vfat partition somewhere (a normal one you normally use is OK), unzip the file, and move everything to ext2. Otherwise you will have weird unusuable UMSDOS filenames.
The distribution was designed to fit on and boot from a zip floppy. I needed to install it on a laptop with no CDROM so it went something like this: Installing some 'other' distribution that has net-boot-install capabilities on/dev/hda2, leaving/dev/hda1 an empty partition... make/dev/hda1 big enough since it will be the root partition in the end... boot the laptop... mount the empty/dev/hda1 somwhere... mount the unzipped zipslack-on-zipdrive in another machine (UMSDOS)... put that somewhere ftp-able... ftp the whole thing (or a tarball thereof) into wherever the empty/dev/hda1 is mounted on the laptop... rdev the kernel there to use/dev/hda1 as its root device... change the fstab there to mount as ext2 (otherwise it will be UMSDOS and weird case-sensitivity things will happen)... boot the new kernel, remove the other install from/dev/hda2, and get on with your life.
There is a README with zipslack which details other things, like adding X.
1996: Microsoft releases a competitor to Netscape Navigator, gives it away freely, and eliminates the revenue potential of Navigator.
1999: Sun attempts the same thing with StarOffice.
It's a pretty wild move, and I doubt Sun was trying to win design contests with it. I just appreciate StarOffice for what it is - the last tool I needed to remove that Windows partition.
Because demand for Windows would dry up by 25% overnight, that's why not. If they were going to try winning Linux friends at all we would have seen IE already. You know, soften the masses up.
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With demand leveling off in recent years, the slowing amount of real innovation coming from the big software houses, and the number of competent programmers rising, it's easy to see how commercial software would become less valuable. The advantages of buying something (in economic terms the "marginal utility"), when you can download a high-quality equivalent for free, are simply no longer there.
The only way for Microsoft to "beat Linux" is to make something better. But that's also the only thing it will take. This isn't magic, it's Adam Smith.
The downside: it's distributed as a UMSDOS filesystem. This means that you have to find a vfat partition somewhere (a normal one you normally use is OK), unzip the file, and move everything to ext2. Otherwise you will have weird unusuable UMSDOS filenames.
The distribution was designed to fit on and boot from a zip floppy. I needed to install it on a laptop with no CDROM so it went something like this: Installing some 'other' distribution that has net-boot-install capabilities on /dev/hda2, leaving /dev/hda1 an empty partition... make /dev/hda1 big enough since it will be the root partition in the end... boot the laptop... mount the empty /dev/hda1 somwhere... mount the unzipped zipslack-on-zipdrive in another machine (UMSDOS)... put that somewhere ftp-able... ftp the whole thing (or a tarball thereof) into wherever the empty /dev/hda1 is mounted on the laptop... rdev the kernel there to use /dev/hda1 as its root device... change the fstab there to mount as ext2 (otherwise it will be UMSDOS and weird case-sensitivity things will happen)... boot the new kernel, remove the other install from /dev/hda2, and get on with your life.
There is a README with zipslack which details other things, like adding X.
1999: Sun attempts the same thing with StarOffice.
It's a pretty wild move, and I doubt Sun was trying to win design contests with it. I just appreciate StarOffice for what it is - the last tool I needed to remove that Windows partition.
Because demand for Windows would dry up by 25% overnight, that's why not. If they were going to try winning Linux friends at all we would have seen IE already. You know, soften the masses up.