Race to GNU/Linux

By conradoho

July 26 1998

Hello everyone...this is my first post on this forum, after considerable lurking for over a year.

Looks like Corel, Netscape and other big software players may be beginning a race to port Apps to GNU/Linux OS. as a rapidly growing new market opportunity.

It seems that MS may also soon conclude that GNU/Linux growing momentum will overtake NT.

So MS may also race to release Win32 API's and Windows GUI's under GPL to try and ensure continuing big time sales of MS Office and other MS Apps cash cows.

Billy G. is fairly clever and responsive. How will MS react to the growing realization of a Linux takeover?

Patents.

By jeremy@netcom.com

July 26 1998

conradoho wrote :

> How will MS react to the growing realization of a Linux takeover?

IMHO they will study the Linux and other Open Source components that are giving them trouble and will then buy or register software patents that would allow them to bully Linux vendors into killing their products.

Don't say there aren't already such patents. The USA patent office will issue patents on such things as mathematical formulae (RSA for example) and on logical bit operations (the XOR patent that was used to threaten the X Windows System).

No - this is going to get *very* ugly very soon once Microsoft realize the very existance of their proprietary OS's is in danger.

This is why software patents *must* be removed, if not then all Open Source software development will have to move out of the USA, with an attendant loss of jobs and skills. The same market forces (this time wielded by the US government) have essentially driven encryption products out of the USA.

Jeremy Allison.