Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[TJ Parker]

Benj: "I have always used MSFT and a few others as bell weathers for general market direction, but Linix is making inroads. When do you think linix will become more complete and easier to use allowing for a significant exodus?"

well, i suppose i'm not a good judge, since i've been using linux since i was in diapers. but my perception is that linux desktops (e.g. redhat, suse) are currently equal or better than msft, with many clone apps out there. the big differential is price. e.g. open office is free, and you can do virtually everything you can do with office, except for msft specific stuff (like coding in visual basic, although you can code in java, scheme or just about anything else, in gnumeric at least - the gnu 'excel' clone). me, i'd say alot of the barriers are still cultural; that plus the baggage of legacy apps out there. but the more cost is an issue, the more that will drag folks over. its already been decided in several countries that gov software must be 'open'. and recent articles over on http://www.theregister.co.uk show that msft has a 'slush fund' for giving huge licensing breaks to co's and gov's that might otherwise be tempted to go the free software route.

anyway, its only a matter of time before linux commodotizes the OS and other middleware and applications. and i think the company that benefits most from that is ibm (and possibly oracle). rhat maybe, but rhat - i *think* bears alot of the legal responsibilities for what's in the code base, which could add some risk there. (e.g. sco is on the warpath to sue linux vendors, though paradoxically they're a linux vendor themselves ...)