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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: alydar who wrote (59377)	7/3/2001 3:21:57 PM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

That's an interesting viewpoint, but the facts are otherwise. See developer.ibm.com for the real story: One of the misconceptions about Linux is that it was started out of a desire to create a competitor to Microsoft™ operating systems. This could not be further from the truth. Like many open source projects, Linux grew out of dissatisfaction. In the case of Linux, it was Linus Torvalds' dissatisfaction with the operating systems available for the PC. Familiar with the multitasking capabilities of the Intel 386 processor through his studies, Mr. Torvalds set out to create an operating environment similar to the UNIX operating system that he was familiar with from the computer labs at school. As Mr. Torvalds puts it, "I couldn't afford some of the commercial OSes and I didn't want to run DOS or Windows -- I don't even know, did Windows really exist then?" To satisfy this need, Mr. Torvalds started work on what today is known as Linux.

To: alydar who wrote (59377)	7/3/2001 10:41:42 PM
From: Tom C	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Ok, let’s review the situation here. Bill F said in a response to Rusty Johnson, that When Linux buries Solaris and the other proprietary Unix variants then let's talk about its impact on MSFT. The gist of the rest of his post is that if Linux can not displace Unix why should MS worry. I don’t necessarily agree with this summary of Bill F’s statement but I do believe that home desktops are still in MS’s hands and I don’t see Linux taking over the everyday consumers pc any time soon. I don’t see evidence of Linux quickly taking over the everyday workers desktop either. You say , but linux was developed to kill msft os, no. unix was not on the mind of linus. What was on his mind at the time doesn’t matter. What he did was bring to the Intel platform a free version of Unix. As Intel based computers move up the food chain from small systems to servers to high-end servers so do Linux and MS NT (aka. Windows 2000). This area is/was growing, they don’t need to replace existing implementations to succeed but by expanding they are trimming the growth of other established players. The established players in this space are the “UNIX” players. What Linus intended doesn’t matter. Linux could very well force some companies that provide Unix and hardware to become niche players focusing on the high end. Informix did that in the database area. Look what happened to Informix. If you hate MS and you love SUNW and Open Source (i.e. Linux), beware of the law of unintended consequences.