“The remedies placed on Microsoft by Judge Thomas Penfield
Jackson could be bad news for players in the Linux market.
According to IDC, both desktop/personal productivity players and
Linux hardware startups could face more competition if Judge
Jackson’s orders are not reversed.“
“The first part of Judge Jackson’s ruling orders Microsoft to
split into two independent entities. “The most immediate impact of
this split would be to free the applications business to make
decisions related to market opportunities outside the Windows
platform,” said Dan Kusnetzky, vice president of IDC’s System
Software research. “As radical as it might seem today, the
applications business could address the up-and-coming Linux client
markets and could place energy into porting its server products
over to the server operating environments, including Linux and
Unix.”
“IDC believes an independent Microsoft applications company
could present a serious threat to desktop/personal productivity
players in the Linux space — including Corel, Applix, and even Sun
Microsystems. In fact, Corel has already publicly acknowledged that
a breakup of Microsoft would be worse than the existing
structure.”