NY Times: Some Say It May Be Too Late to Dismantle Microsoft

“By offering its own free alternative to Microsoft Office,
Varian said, Sun may discourage any new Microsoft spin-off from
trying to compete in the Linux market. That, presumably, would not
be the kind of competitive response the government would hope for
with a Microsoft breakup.”

“Yet, several executives in the Linux community said they hoped
that a Microsoft spinoff would create versions of its applications
for Linux, making the free operating system much more attractive to
nontechnical computer users. So far, Linux has tended to be an
operating system only a geek could love.”

“If Microsoft shows up on Linux, everything would change; it
would be a big enabler for Linux,” said Michael Boiche,
co-founder and chief executive of Eazel, a company designing
software intended to make Linux easier to use.”

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