CNET/Yahoo!: Microsoft learns from its enemy–Linux

“Linux’s success in low-end servers led the company to
revise its server product line, said Doug Miller, director of
competitive strategy for Microsoft’s Windows division. And
Microsoft learned that it needs better interactions with the
programmers who use Microsoft products.

“Any competing technology is good for the industry. It causes us
to evaluate our own offerings,” he said in an interview at the
LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. “Linux has been a catalyst for
doing that at Microsoft.”

Future versions of Microsoft’s server operating system, formerly
code-named Whistler server, then Windows 2002, and now called
Windows .Net Server, will include not only the Server, Advanced
Server and Datacenter versions of Windows 2000 (news – web sites),
but also a stripped-down version that costs less for use on Web
servers, Miller said.”

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