[olug] M$ Linux? Coming soon ...

William E. Kempf wekempf at cox.net
Tue Dec 10 23:03:43 UTC 2002


Jonathan Warren said:
> The news outlets are for entertainment.  If you want the facts good
> luck.

Cynical, but mostly accurate.

> On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 04:34:25PM -0600, Adam Lassek wrote:
>> That is an incredibly misleading headline. Basically some group of
>> people predicting Microsoft will start offering software for Linux in
>> a couple of years. Yeah right. To do so would be an admission of
>> defeat, it goes against the very principles of the company.

First the article clearly indicates this is a prediction not backed up by
admission from MS.  However, the META group is specifically in business to
make predictions such as this.  If they made baseless, unfounded
predictions they'd lose credibility, and thus revenue.  If they are making
this prediction, you can bet there's some solid evidence to back it up. 
Doesn't insure the prediction will come true, but it still carries a lot
of credibility.

I do think it would be much more likely that MS would release a variant of
BSD, however, as their opinion of the GPL from a legal standpoint is well
known (and I believe well founded).  Other than that, I actually think the
META group might be right on target.

>> Whats worse is that CNN takes these unfounded predictions and makes
>> them look like solid facts. Ugh.

I don't think they presented them as solid facts, nor do I think the
prediction is likely unfounded.  If nothing else, they came from one of
the few companies left with any credibility with regards to predicting
such things.

William E. Kempf






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