Comment Articles

Bill is picking up penguins

Guy Kewney AnchorDesk

Published: 22 Dec 1999 16:42 GMT

Yes, it's true; Redmond is hiring Linux-expert staff -- programmers, marketing types. Yes, it's also true; there will be a bigger market for Linux networks than for NT on Itanium, for some time. Yes, it's possibly also true that Microsoft will, one day, be forced to launch its own version of Linux, and that the people it's recruiting now, will be key players in that move.

It's even possible that the conspiracy theorists are right: that Microsoft hopes to sabotage Linux by producing a huge, MS-style package with enormous executables, requiring multiple parallel Pentium III processors to run -- though I doubt this is done deliberately. Unlikely, to the point of being something I simply don't believe -- but I'll admit it's conceivable.

But Microsoft isn't about to launch its own Linux this year. It simply can't.

To be sure, it won't take as long to launch MSLinux, as it took to launch Windows. For a start, most of what Microsoft would need, is already there, in theory; it just has to pick up a licence like anybody else can. But that's not the problem. The problem with an operating system can be described in one word:

Drivers.

Even small, startup companies like Red Hat and Suse are vulnerable to complaints that "there ought to be a driver for this obscure card I have in my out of date machine." Microsoft, however, simply can't cope with that level of lack of support in the corporate business.

If it is to compete in the Linux market, MS Linux must install, flawlessly, on 98% of installed PCs. It simply can't get away with saying to large customers that "it is up to the maker of that card to write a driver."

The reason it can't, is the nature of the new, corporate-level alliance which Microsoft is hoping will be typical of its business relationships with its customers, now that it is selling Windows 2000 with Active Directory.

Read on to hear more...