eWeek: Linux Making Headway in Desktop Space

“Linux is not going to take over the desktop space anytime soon,
but is making significant headway in vertical markets, Mitch Kapor,
the chair of the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) and
founder of Lotus Development Corp., said here on Thursday.

“‘It has been a long march to the Linux desktop, and I am
convinced that Linux will wind up with a greater share of the
desktop market over time,’ he said in his O’Reilly Open Source
Convention (Oscon) keynote address, titled ‘Open Source on the
Mainstream Desktop.’

“Kapor said his first encounter with free software was in 1985,
when he was still at Lotus. ‘I met Richard Stallman [the founder of
the free software movement], who was picketing the company for our
‘look and feel’ lawsuits. I thought at that time that free software
was one of those hopelessly idealistic ideas,’ he said. But the
industry and Kapor’s views have changed…”

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