“The software titan, which has no love for Linux technology and
its open-source philosophical underpinnings, quickly dashed cold
water on the report.“‘Microsoft will not be engineering server software expressly
for Linux, and continues to make its strategic bets on the Windows
platform,’ Peter Houston, senior director of Windows Server
Strategies, said in a statement.“But the rapid spread of Linux could force Microsoft’s hand,
said Meta analysts.“‘We think Linux server stuff is going to be huge, and we don’t
think that’s something Microsoft can walk away from,’ said Meta
Group analyst Dale Kutnick. ‘We think Microsoft will (support
Linux) because there are powerful economics. Microsoft is an
economically driven company.’
“‘Microsoft will not be engineering server software expressly
for Linux,’ was the official line from Peter Houston, a senior
director at Microsoft’s server business.“Which leaves several options un-denied, if you like. One is
that since .NET’s common language infrastructure (CLI) has already
ported to FreeBSD, Microsoft doesn’t need to be doing any
engineering ‘expressly for Linux.’ .NET contains a PAL, or
‘Platform Adaptation Layer’, and UNIX build environment and
toolchain.“The second, rather more obvious option, is that even if
Microsoft isn’t doing the engineering itself, it might be
supporting someone else who is…”
Related Story:
Reuters: META Predicts Microsoft Will Offer Linux Software(Dec
10, 2002)
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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