Hmm, it's interesting to shoot the bull about business here; AFAIK, we are mostly geeks/programmers, not PHB's, nor economists....
Another potentially interesting facet to the discussion; barring "whom" will take down M$, how long will it take for company X to do it?
We do remember that before the Dark Ages the "Evil Empire" had three letters in its acronym, not two, don't we?
What will the technology be that grabs the trophy in 2020, and what will the company be like? How will the market be different? Sir Bill has stated that hardware will be almost free, and M$ will survive and prosper in the EU, given time....
Hmm, BSD rant: well, today's news: Free, Net, and Open are now being monitored at Distrowatch.com ...
Last week, O'Reilly was getting together a "BSD Success stories" book/pamphlet or somesuch. I wrote a story; I doubt it'll make the cut.
FBSD 4.10 is in BETA; 5.X is on about 3 times as many archs as the 4.X series was; and FreeBSD was on half (IIRC) of Netcraft's "most reliable hosting providers" top ten for the last reporting period (as has been true of most of the last several periods....)
Can't say much about Open and Net, as I don't monitor those communities. Either way, not bad for a "dead" OS. We all know those guys are trolls, anyhow....
It's more like BSD is the cousin that moved to California, got a decent job, spends the weekends at the beach or in the mountains and never writes....
