Get Off Microsoft

More Windows users are switching to Macs because their Windows PCs are out of date. People have finally figured out (after about a decade of it being true) that there is no penalty in switching from Windows to the Mac.

The Microsoft brand is getting pummeled overseas, in the music industry, and in the server market. Can you even estimate how much good will has been lost? Gates and Ballmer must get indigestion every morning as they scan the headlines on their pocket PCs.

This is how Microsoft gets away with “interoperability” — co-opting proven standards (like XML) and turning them into Microsoft pseudo-standards, which are then set as defaults for the program while offering the real standards as options.

Microsoft’s shakedown turned Novell into a Microsoft partner with SuSE Linux; now it has turned Xandros into a partner as well. Microsoft made them a deal they couldn’t refuse. Like garbage hauling contractors in the Northeast Jersey of The Sopranos, Xandros and Novell have nothing to lose by paying tribute to Microsoft. Linux is thriving in the shadow of Microsoft’s cold war.

Microsoft is resorting to a Cold War on Open Source and Linux, using fear and uncertainty as it primary weapons. Microsoft is using this threat to bring Open Source developers and Linux suppliers — and their large clients — to the bargaining table to pay licenses. The patents should be challenged, because many of them are probably suspect. But these patents probably won’t be challenged in court, because Microsoft does not want a public legal fight. Microsoft would rather keep the Open Source community muttering underneath its breath, and reveal nothing.