“No list of predictions would be complete without the one from
left field. Here’s mine: Microsoft will embrace Linux as a
distribution platform for its .NET technology. Microsoft can’t
continue its revenue growth by relying on Windows as its only
distribution platform. One easy way to get a slice of the UNIX
revenue pie is to port the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) to
Linux. This would allow Linux developers to write code in any
language (not just C++ and Java) on Windows platforms and then
deploy that code on inexpensive Linux servers.”
“This strategy will allow Microsoft to move more rapidly toward
their .NET services vision by accelerating the development and
deployment of these services on the Internet. More importantly, the
.NET CLR will become to the Internet what Microsoft Windows was to
the PC–a unifying set of standards that allows developers to
leverage their application code across a large number of users
while the system software takes care of all the mundane system
tasks. In the ’90s, the mundane tasks were GUI rendering and device
management. In the ’00s, the tasks are object integration across
systems and processes.”
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