[plug] Are we at 'war' with Microsoft?

[Chris Caston]

Using Linux and having a dislike for Microsoft seem to go hand-in-hand
but has this perspective got Microsoft into the defencive?

Microsoft is now dropping their prices, developing their own UNIX like
shell and allowing their servers to run without the UI, developing
longhorn and all the 'revolutionised computing' that comes with it.

A recent article (yeah I lost the link but I'm sure you all know the
one) said what makes most Open Source better is the fact that it isn't
released until it's finished and even then it doesn't get mass adopted
unless it actually is good, whereas with companies like Microsoft the
releases are driven by marketing decisions and programmers have their
"rears on the line" in order to get it out in time even if the quality
of the software suffers and no one really wanted it in the first place.

But if open source developers are now trying to compete with Microsoft
competing with us and trying to beat or reach Microsoft's deadlines then
isn't is possible that the quality of open source software could suffer?

Worse, could we lose out innovation and just be trying to quickly
implement in open source every new thing that Microsoft brings along
examples:
 .net, exchange 2003, WinFS, palladium

I also think that Microsoft in this race is kind of forgetting what
their own customers want. None of my customers are every going to use
Msh (Microsoft Shell) more likely it will be a new way for virus writers
to target them with malicious scripts.

So if MS is bankrolling SCO (and SCOs lawyer's get paid based on the
outcome) to try to sue Linux and the GPL out of existence they probably
forgot their own customers requirements in the process. 

So if there is a war between the Open Source community and MS (albeit
some kinda coldwar) is this what we really want?

Competition is seen as healthy but in this market MS it used to having a
monopoly then they problem expect that the next big operating system
will also have a monopoly which is what they are scared of. 
I'd like to see homogeneous environments of Windows, *BSD, Unix, Linux,
Apple, Java based OS's and BeoS as well as every other OS that I missed
out.

Perhaps we all need to sit down and create standards to allow everyone
to exist and to integrate. To allow the peaceful existance of both open
source and closed source.   

regards,

Chris




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