Interesting Viewpoint

I wandered across this article this morning and thought it deserved posting, especially in the light of similar Microsoft sentiments in recent months.

While Microsoft can't possibly 'buy out' Open Source as a whole, it'll be interesting to see if it means Microsoft start interacting with Open Source in a better light to ensure more interoperability between systems (possibly the only way to achieve continued market share), or if they'll make better quality end-products, or systems to deploy those products on, or if they'll continue to do exactly what they've done in the past.

One thing is nearly certain, within the next five years, Microsoft will need to do something a) special or b) underhanded to continue to operate in the market as they have done -- the amount of end-users that are coming to me and other ISV's since the advent of Microsoft's Vista product-line and asking about Linux on the desktop is increasing and that can only be a promising sign for the future.

The time for lipservicing the FOSS market, is over.