On Tuesday 04 February 2003 12:42 am, Ben Rosenberg wrote:

I don't usually post this stuff. I think Fred does a good enough job, but this was something I just had to make sure people saw. :)

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,857638,00.asp

"To the extent the open source model gains increasing market acceptance, sales of the company's products may decline, the company may have to reduce the prices it charges for its products, and revenues and operating margins may consequently decline," it said."

Very good news.

Thanks Ben. I regularly read eweek, I get a subscription for free (they think I'm the head of the R&D department for a medical IT firm - hehe). Considering the ZDnet is an M$ partner for about the last 4 or 5 years most their print is full of M$ articles about new products and services ad naseum (bleh). However they have increasingly had more positive articles about how Linux is making major inroads into the enterprise and server sectors. And the last 3 or 4 issues have been ripe with user and business IT admin praises about using Linux, especially last weeks issue. I watch this stuff closely and read/gather info from many sources, both pro and con regarding M$ and Linux. If one looks reads between the lines it becomes evident that M$ is struggling with itself more than anything else. They spent so much time being sleezy and destroying or capturing technologies and businesses to further their own captial and market share. They have addicted the office space with their Suites and OS. It's funny that now that they have saturated the desktop market they had planned to turn their market and client addicts into subscribers. Fortunately along the same time they saturated their market space the econmy went south big time. So, they're at a loss as to what to do. This is why you see such unusual things like Billy boy giving keynotes at Comdex about "smart" watches and Fridge boards. Regarding Mario's post. I too am an end-user. I think that the next kernel will make a big difference concerning the desktop. Why? Because for one it is to have much inproved I/O which translates to much much better Multimedia. So, this and better memory usage and packet writing (meaning no more "ide-scsi for cd burning) that will be used for writing cds and a host of other small improvements will be noticable. I usually see things running in 18 month to 2 year cycles regarding Linux and major enhancements that drive it into a broader spectrum in market spaces. Given the push to get some sort of "Linux on the Desktop" in places like small-medium and corporate offices by the time the next kernel comes out a substantial amount of work will have been done and lacing the new kernel capabilities around this will make a very big difference IMHO. Don't think that M$ is completely clueless. They have very smart people who can see this coming and this is why the step up in advertising and previously the FUD as well (the FUD has backfired on them in couple of key areas and moments). Once the major vendors and the Linux community reach a point where they can work together things will be very nice. Presently many vendors/software companies have concerns about stuff like minor kernel changes breaking dependencies (such as with NVIDIA drivers and new kernels of example). When the vendors step up to the plate and the developers begin to understand and work toward alleviating vendor concerns then all bets are off and Linux will be prime for the larger publc sector (e.g. Jane and Joe Average). I think it will happen in about 18 months when you'll be able to look bach and see what's happened. Just MHO, Curtis