Armageddon Begins - Linux (good) Vs. Microsoft (evil)

When you consider the way Microsoft has diversified itself into the home entertainment arena (and other arenas), I'd agree that Gates was a business genius. However, in the realm of computer operating systems, his genius was confined to the beginning of things. I think he wisely retired when he did ... much in the same way that a major league baseball pitcher would retire when he realizes his pitching "ain't what it used to be."

According to Fortune Magazine, over half of all Fortune 500 companies now use Linux in their datacenters. Also, while the U.S. Supreme Court renders "decisions" on specific cases, they also issue general "opinions." And just last month, the Supreme Court issued an unanimous opinion that patents were issued too readily over the last two decades and that many of them should be considered invalid. In short, Microsoft doesn't even have a 50% marketshare in datacenter computing anymore ... and can expect a heavily jaundiced eye if patent claims end up before the high court. And if Microsoft is making threats that could affect the bottom lines of more than 50% of the Fortune 500, you can bet such claims would end up being decided in the high court.

Microsoft's behavior now is more like a "rat cornered" by a number of large dogs. Eben Moglen, Executive Director of the Software Freedom Law Center, even made a dire prediction ... positing that if Microsoft goes ahead with this fight, Steve Ballmer would become a modern-day Napoleon facing his Waterloo.

But, the cornered rat doesn't only have to worry about the big guns of the Fortune 500. They're losing the "hearts & minds" battle among home users. In the history of home computing, no major hardware dealer has ever done a backstep in OS installations ... until now. Already, due to consumer demand, Dell, HP, and CDW have dropped their previous "Vista only" marketing and now re-offer WinXP to customers. And Dell will shortly offer desktops and notebooks with Ubuntu Linux installed as well (the same OS that CEO Michael Dell uses). The grassroots market is turning up its nose at Vista ... partly due to driver issues and other incompatability issues ... and partly because Vista's EULA reads like it could have been written by George Orwell (1984). They're either insisting on XP, downgrading to XP, or are for the first time considering Linux or Macintosh platforms.

FWIW, Gates recently made a keynote speech at a hardware convention crowing about Vista "selling" 40 million licenses. But when cornered by PC Magazine, asking them to differentiate between in-the-box "sales" and installations on computers yet to be sold, Microsoft declined comment (uh-huh). Or, as one Wired Magazine columnist wrote, "Vista is writing checks that Microsoft can't cash."

Personally, I'm about a month away from buying a new desktop. It will be a multiple-boot system with Win98SE in one partition, WinXP in another, and the rest dedicated to Ubuntu, Mepis, and possibly other Linux distros. And as soon as I can find open source alternatives, my Windows partitions will be history. I've been a Microsoft OS user since DOS 4.2 came out. But when XP came out, I saw the beginnings of licensing issues I didn't like. Vista solidified my hatred for the Microsoft EULA. And if I eventually get sued by Microsoft for using Linux, so be it. At least I'll be in good company (grin).