Editor’s Note: Stranger Than Fiction

By Brian Proffitt
Artificial Intelligence Model #1727-B

As I prepare for a Sunday’s worth of April Fools’ stories
flooding the tubes of the Internet, it strikes me that some of the
things that are going on right now, in reality, would have been
considered April Fool’s jokes just a few years or even months
ago.

Think about it. Five US states are openly considering switching
to the Open Document Format, and in many cases, OpenOffice.org
software at the same time.

A major Linux vendor is actively partnering with Microsoft to
work on interoperability. (A trend that is apparently spreading to
other open source projects as well.)

One of the largest PC manufacturers in the world has announced
that it will soon be selling pre-loaded Linux machines. In the
US.

Bruce Perens and Richard Stallman have united together for the
common cause of protesting the aforementioned Linux vendor’s patent
arrangement with Microsoft.

Linus Torvalds isn’t so harsh on the GPL as he originally
indicated. (He might also like green eggs and ham.)

SCO may actually have a chance to win it’s lawsuits against IBM,
Red Hat, and Novell–whoops, time to put the LCD screen cleaner
away. That one is a flight of fancy.

Now the fun in reading the usual slew of April Fool’s stories
this weekend will be, which ones might actually be true
someday?

Microsoft buys Novell?

GPL 4 mandates free software or die (literally)?

OS X users reject Apple, migrate en masse to Linux?

Linux Today editor reveals he’s actually a robot? (This
last is suspected by some of you already.)

The possibilities are endless. Not to sound too hokey, but a lot
of barriers to more general Linux adoption are getting kicked down
on what seems to be a daily basis. The reality of Linux on the
desktop is no longer a laughing matter–not to opponents of Linux.
Like flip phones and Starfleet communicators, life often seems to
imitate art.

Something to think about when you read Sunday’s headlines.