“The standard-bearer for the new Linux reality is IBM, in
particular President Sam Palmisano. A year ago, Palmisano pushed
Big Blue to its current position as one of the loudest and most
determined Linux advocates, with the company spreading Linux across
all four of its major server lines.”
“During his opening keynote address Wednesday, Palmisano will
declare that the Linux effort has advanced from convincing
established computing companies to support the operating system to
winning over customers who actually use it, sources familiar with
the speech said. While this message is undeniably self-serving,
more independent observers generally agree. Merrill Lynch analyst
Steve Milunovich believes Linux has conquered many of its early
problems–the scarcity of programs built to run atop it, the
immaturity of technical support, its confinement to low-end
computers–and now Linux poses a serious threat to Microsoft and
Sun Microsystems.”
“The code-sharing, cooperative “open source” programming
model that underlies Linux is a “better mousetrap” than the
closed-source, proprietary methods employed by Microsoft,
Deutsche Banc Alex Brown analyst Phil Rueppel and colleagues said
in a 147-page report earlier this month. Specifically,
open-source software naturally shifts priorities away from the
companies that sell software–Microsoft and Oracle, for
example–and toward the customers that use the software.”