Tuesday, March 24, 2009

What if Linux kills Microsoft?

One of the great by products of capitalism is that companies compete with each other and consumers get a variety of products and services out of competition. The force behind this fierce competition is due to the accumulation of wealth by individuals. When capitalism is allowed to go unchecked it produces monopolies which can hurt consumers and other companies by limiting choice and stopping competition. Microsoft has played this game so well that it is considered an legal monopoly in the United States.

The power that Microsoft had was limitless before Linux became popular with the software industry. It opened up an opportunity for the most unlikely competitor to grow and mature. It is quite unthinkable for Linux to have thrived so quickly without Microsoft's help. Billions of dollars were spent on Linux to make it what it is now by major companies. It had overcome Microsoft's anti-Linux propaganda, Microsoft Return On Investment propaganda and Microsoft/SCO lawsuit. Things that would have killed any company threatening Microsoft.

As you may already know that Linux is different. It is not a company it is a community. This community gave birth to code that is licensed under the GPL. The GPL in short is what garlic does to a vampire. Microsoft can not use the GPL as it violates its core belief, never to share anything with anyone. Proprietary is a word that Microsoft wills. It makes greedy people salavate. It is the reason why Microsoft became so powerful. Yet not more powerful than a couple of giant companies which helped Linux slowly gain credibility.

Let's imagine that Linux kills off Micrsoft. Microsoft gets bought off by IBM or Google. Now what is going to happen to Linux. Will Linux continue to thrive now that it has no more enemies? It is possible that Linux could die out with Microsoft. Now that companies are no longer affraid of Microsoft, Linux may no longer have a function. I don't mean it will happen immediately but after serveral years Linux will be consider mainstream and other technologies may start to replace it. Now that Microsoft is no longer a threat it is possible that the infrastructure of Linux may not be needed.

So we say goodbye to Linux the open source OS. Replaced by another OS part proprietary and part open source. Someone in the past said that if you don't learn from the past you are bound to repeat it. So will Microsoft get resurrected in the future? And will Linux come back to save them all again?


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