Reason #1: it forces Microsoft to lower its prices, regardless of market share.
Microsoft adjusts its prices in order to remain relevant. Free software keeps
it on its toes in that respect. Apple, on the other hand, makes sales for
Microsoft (Office), keeps its prices up (fixing), and has Microsoft as a
partner and shareholder.
Reason #2: Linux dominates the embedded space, which is very large (probably
orders of magnitude larger than the desktop, in terms of CPUs). It also
controls supercomputers that are increasingly becoming part of the more
universal network, including search engines (Hadoop comes to mind, bigtable).
Reason #3: it shatters misconceptions about Microsoft's foundations, which are
intellectual monopolies and other nasties like DRM. That's why Microsoft talks
about 'education' (pollution of minds) as an anti-Linux tactic in its latest
SEC filing.
Looking at (1-3) again:
* Linux lowers cost.
* Linux enables real innovation, performance, efficiency (environment)
* Linux enables people to be free and it democratises
February 2008:
http://www.news.com/Feeling-the-heat-at-Microsoft/2008-1012_3-6232458.html?tag=ne.fd.mnbc
"[If I ask you who is Microsoft's biggest competitor now, who would it be?]
|
[Steve] Ballmer: Open...Linux. I don't want to say open source. Linux,
certainly have to go with that..."
|
|
