Why not Linux?

[Rick Tomaschuk]

On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 13:29 -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:

> While legally/morally questionable tactics have a real
> (major?) role to play in the domination of the
> industry by one player, there are other factors.
> Another "joke" from times gone by was "Nobody ever
> gets fired for choosing IBM". Point was, if an IT
> professional picked a solution from say Burroughs over
> IBM, and things went bad, the chances of getting fired
> were much higher than picking an IBM solution. 

I just don't want to be the poor SOB responsible for installing,
maintaining, patching, de-virus, de-spyware...

> You can punish individuals for breaking the law, and
> the thought of Bill Gates being REQUIRED to wear an
> orange jumpsuit has a certain appeal. As for
> corporations, the best you can hope to do is force
> them to reform, this can be done by breaking them up
> and/or  other legal actions, such as forced sale of
> assets. Now, I don't know of any ideal solution for
> Microsoft, but here are some ideas: 
> 
> - Make the source code to all Microsoft products open
> source under a BSD or GPL licence.
> - Require Microsoft OSs become a seperate company from
> the other parts.
> 
I don't believe Microsoft will ever be forced by Government to 
change since to many they are a 'rags to riches' (sort of) story.
Government intervention will be seen as excessive state control which
many will take offense to. The best we can hope for is a co-ordinated
effort to match them in every market to take away their 'oxygen' as
their managers refer to it and drive margins down to the point they are
unable to be profitable. Quite frankly its good to have a large window$
installed base. It will be a huge segment needing an upgrade in the
future.
RickT
-- 
http://www.TorontoNUI.ca

"This really isn't that hard. If you're going to kill someone there
isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry -- you just
pull the trigger. Angry discussions before hand are a waste of time. We
need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger." -Former Microsoft VP
James Allchin in a 09-9-91 e-mail (as revealed in Caldera v. Microsoft)
http://www.msboycott.com/quotes/

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