“Analysts picked up on the possibilities of open source pretty
early on, particularly its ability to unify the long-fragmented
Unix market around a single, consistent platform. The persistent
incompatibilities between Unix distributions, each of which had
been used by vendors to preserve their enterprise market share, led
to great enthusiasm for Linux as an alternative, which was both
open and far more consistent.“Back in 2000, Forrester Research pegged the Linux market–based
on server revenues– at US$1.5 billion, to grow to US$2.5 billion
in 2002 and US$15 billion in 2007. A 2002 Giga Information Group
report was entitled ‘Linux has gone mainstream: are you up to it?’
and predicted Linux would overtake Windows as the leading operating
system on new