____/ The Ghost In The Machine on Wednesday 05 March 2008 00:28 : \____
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> <nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote
> on Tue, 4 Mar 2008 15:52:14 -0800 (PST)
> <b38f415a-878f-491a-9a6c-ffecec9fc499@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> Yesterday Ballmer corrected himself, saying it wasn't IBM that was his
>> greatest competitor, it was Linux. Maybe now he'll have to go back to
>> IBM. Then back to Linux. Then back to ...
>
> How Ballmer can compete against a non-corporation
> is far from clear; Linux, at best, is supported
> by Linus Torvalds or a foundation in lieu thereof.
> (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2559 suggests that
> the trademark is owned by him personally, which may lead
> to some interesting issues for his estate...but hopefully
> that's not a worry for a long time yet. ;-) )
>
> And then there's the Halloween documents:
> http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/
>
> But never mind that: where did we want to go today? ;-)
It was actually Gates who said 2 years ago that IBM is the company he's most
afraid of. Both companies have growing pains, but IBM's assets are worth
faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar greater than Microsoft's, not to mention the size of
the workforce. To Ballmer, Linux and FOSS (in the GPL sense) is the weapon,
the /tool/ with which IBM can easily defeat Microsoft. That's why they
continue to corrupt standards (e.g. Silverlight versus (X)HTML and OOXML
versus ODF) and try to shove in software patents, essentially turning Free
software into Fee [sic] software. IBM's VP of OSS and standards reads my blog,
he dislikes Mono already, and I am hardly surprised that they snubbed SUSE and
went with RHEL in this case. SUSE, like Novell, is now with Microsoft,
fighting against ODF and assisting OOXML, Silverlight, and patent FUD. Good
luck to de Icaza as he fights IBM, Google and many others who fight for
standards. Microsoft loves him. He takes it as a compliment and
acknowledgement of his accomplishments -- whatever they may be (remember that
he started GNOME after applying for a job at Microsoft).
--
~~ Best of wishes
Microsoft loves competition.
"I’d be glad to help tilt lotus into into the death spiral. I could do it
Friday afternoon but not Saturday. I could do it pretty much any time the
following week."
--Brad Silverberg, Microsoft
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