[wplug] Whither Open Source?

Rob Knapp myddrin at myddrin.com
Fri May 13 09:33:07 EDT 2005


On Fri, 2005-05-13 at 09:15 -0400, Chris Romano wrote:

> If MS bought Red Hat, I would image that a lot of Red Hat Customers
> would change distros as fast as they can.  I know I would.  It could
> be a good thing for Novell, I am sure a lot of admins would switch to
> SUSE or Novell Linux Desktop.
> 

I also question just what they would be getting other than a database of
customers and a brand of questionable value.  I imagine that most of the
developers would start looking for new positions (or taking sabbaticals)
as soon as the deal was announced....  all of the IP is released under
the GPL, so it's not like they would be "ending linux"...heck, they
could have all the IP for the cost of a download already.

All of this is from a dinner between two top execs?  The interpretation
I would take from this (based on MS's past experience) was Ballmer
saying something more like "You can have the unix market, but don't go
after any MS customers or the desktop or we will bury you.".... Pretty
much like they did to Netscape and others in the past.

Going from a dinner to acquisition seems like an considerable stretch
given that it would basically require MS to admit that there is
something to linux worth buying... (even if it is destroying a
competitor.)  


> Chris
> 
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-- 
---
Rob "Myddrin" Knapp
myddrin at myddrin.com
http://www.myddrin.com



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