MS and Linux products

[Atul Chitnis <achitnis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2000, Aditya Deshpande wrote:

> | On Tue, 18 Jan 2000, Aditya Deshpande wrote:
> |
> | > Well next thing we know they come out with M$-Linux and say
> | > 1. they have completely changed the traditional Linux by adding a new
> | > graphical interface called M$-Xwindows(tm)
> |
> | That is not so farfetched as it may sound - Apple has demonstrated that
> | kind of approach by changing the underlying OS while keeping the UI
> | consistent.
> |
> | > 2. New interfaces and never before applications like Wordprocessors,
> | > Spreadsheets can now be run on Linux.
> |
> | Hallelujah! ;-)
> |
> | Seriously - if M$ gets broken up and the apps division gets freed from the
> | clutches of Windows, they'll have Office for Linux, IE for Linux, etc. out
> | in a flash. After all, they know which side of their bread is buttered.
> |
> | Atul
> 
> Question Atul is that whether they would respect the GPL and release the
> source. I think this time they would. However what scares me is if they
> try to aquire debian, red hat etc. Without going microsoft bashing, I think
> it is their business strategy to buy out competition. It is the monopoly I
> don't like.


Sorry for the long quote - just to put everyone in this group on the same
page.

MS won't respect GPL, and they won't have to. They are perfectly in their
rights to produce closed source software, though they will lose out on the
benefits of open source.

They cannot acquire anything in Linux, since Linux is not for sale. They
can try and buy a company like RedHat, but that would quickly get them
nowhere, since the Linux-market would simply move to another distribution.
That's the beauty of Linux - born free, and forever so.

What they *could* do is buy out a development company that does Linux
*development* - that would make much more sense.

The "buyout" business tactic is not uncommon, and even RedHat does it
(Cygnus), so it is not a MS-specific strategy.

Atul