http://www.linuxia64.org/ Caldera's name appears on this page at least a couple of types - including under "IA-64 Linux Distributions"

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030725 .gtchinajuly25/BNStory/Technology/

http://www.sgi.com/serv ers/altix/64bit_linux.html

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Sounds like he is engaging is lazy analysis to me, considering:

(1) Microsoft wasn't ALWAYS rich. Other companies were just as dominant as they are now when they got started.

(2) Unlike the other alternatives, there can be no ultimate victory against GNU/Linux, at least that wouldn't involve the government rounding up a lot of people and shooting them. IBM gave up, and to a lesser extent so did all of Microsoft other competitors. Linus and Stalman could sign contracts with Microsoft tomorrow and not much would change. Their efforts were intended to outlast them (says so in both their biographies) and even if Open Source were somehow made illegal, I have no doubt there would be a thriving underground.

On China he his much more on target. China claims they did not want to use Intel processors or MS operating systems for SECURITY reasons, and I am sure they were not talking about viruses, but rather things that we might sneak in there (like DRM) that would put us (USA) at an advantage over anyone else who didn't own the keys to the technology.

As I read it, they developed their own 64 bit technology based on an AMD design, but also had help from IBM and Transmeta.

Here where he is wrong again though, China will not rule the market for this technology if they go closed source, or closed hardware design either. Other countries would have the same reservations about using such technologies as they do now about using Wintel. What the Chinese market will represent though is a violent bursting of the Wintel bubble. With extremely cheap alternatives to choose from Microsoft, Intel, HP, and all the others will have an even harder time maintaining comfortable price levels. Companies like Dell and HP are already little more than importers of the hardware they sell. As time goes on it will be more and more tempting to cut out the middle man.

This is not a totally thrilling prospect. On the other hand the American technology sector has no one to blame but themselves for artificially holding prices up, restricting competition and patenting which direction you wipe your butt. Eventually the wall they have built around themselves will come tumbling down, and America will not be the better for it.

Absent Microsoft and Intel's dominance I suspect the center of the open source movement would be more in the USA than it is now, which is largely built on inertia. The tide is slowly going out for us I'm afraid.

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While MS already has and will continue attacking Linux, they really can't make a frontal assault. First of all, there are too many people who would cry foul and say that MS is abusing it's monopoly. I'd don't think MS wants to end up in court against the US government again, even if all that happened the last time was little more than a slap on the wrist. The US isn't the only market that MS has to worry about. MS is still being investigated by the EU. Everyone is expecting the EU to fine MS for a $VERYLARGENUMBER. If MS makes an direct attack on Linux, they risk the chance of the EU getting involved. After the "NSAKEY" incident in 1999, a large number of countries think that the US has backdoors in MS software. The countries are already suspicious of MS and are willing to switch to anything else. As mentioned by another poster, China is already making plans to switch to Linux for "security" reasons. So even if MS makes a frontal assault on Linux, the only market such an attack has any chance of success is in the US. In doing so, MS would lose all of the other markets in the world. In the global economy that's going on today, a gain in one while market while losing all of the others can kill a company.

Second and as pointed out above, if MS does attack Linux, then the only place it can do so is in the US (or by having US laws apply to other countries). One of the things that has been pointed out when SCO started it's ugly actions, even if SCO is successful, Linux development will simply move to other parts of the world. Because of the mistrust and hatred towards the US by other countries, SCO will not be able to completely halt Linux development. Take a look at China. If a quarter of the world's population switch to Linux, how is SCO or MS going to stop it? They can't. A frontal attack by MS would only succeed in moving Linux development to other parts of the world.

Third, there are a lot of corporations and companies that have invested heavily (with both time and money) in Linux. The biggest of them is IBM, which is betting it's future in operating systems on Linux. If MS does attack Linux, do you really think IBM or anyone else who has invested in Linux would simply roll over? Imagine IBM and MS going at it. Not only would any lawsuits end up in court for the next 10 years, such an event would seriously hurt the computer industry in the US.

Those are just some of the reasons why MS wouldn't make a frontal assault on Linux. So what is left, the dirty tricks that MS is good at. 1. FUD!. MS has been spreading FUD about Linux for years. 2. Extending protocols and services to lock out the compitition. This was discussed in the Halloween Document, http://www.opensource.org/halloween/ . Just look at what MS did with Kerberos. 3. Vendor lockin. MS has already ended up in court over license agreements with vendors that limit which operating system they can use and sell. 4. Plain old dirty tricks. One of the reasons for all the conspiracy theories that MS is behind SCO is because it's so easy to believe. IF MS can't make a frontal assault on Linux without hurting themselves, then have another company do it for them.

The VC was right that MS would try to kill off Linux, but actually doing so would not be possible.

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It's logistically impossible. MS killed off OS/2 because there was a single choke point - the PC end user, who MS got to via the pre-installed Windows idea. Naturally no one (end user) was interested in handing over extra cash for an additional piece of software; naturally no OEM was interested in paying for an OS that wasn't going to be used, and paying double - at least - for the OS that everybody was going to be using by default.

That doesn't work with Linux. You couldn't download OS/2 free of charge; IBM had the weird idea back then, of making it a profit center, instead of a loss leader. I'm afraid I sugggested changing tack like that - making it a loss leader - to IBM, and there was some movement towards that, but not enough to arrest the decline.

I think instead, Microsoft'll wind up reducing the perceived value of its Operating Systems to that used by the "software pirates", just to keep their Office cash cow returning turnover.

As far as China, India etc, goes, all the better for them. Microsoft's ability to exert pressure on end-users suspected of "software piracy" is sure to backfire.

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The problem is that the Federal Government drank the Microsoft Kool-Aid a long time ago. I know Fed managers that would have a nervous breakdown if you told them they had to transition from Windows. Heck, I know fed managers that would still be using Wang minicomputers if you could still find spare parts for them. Now that they have been forced to go with PCs they expect to stay there until they retire.

That said, I don't think Microsoft will show any hesitation in going after Linux fairly or unfairly. They have copies running now, and I'm sure they are formulating their attack which will come on all fronts, technical, advertising, FUD, legal. I don't think it will be pretty.

A quick uptake of Linux by US companies would be a great thing (for the country I mean), but I think it far more likely that Microsoft will meet with at least partial success in slowing down Linux here. They will have much less success elsewhere in the world. It will then be pressure from the rest of the world that at first forces our homegrown Windows systems to be in compatibility mode for international commerce and communications to continue working. It will be unfamiliar territory for Microsoft to have to remain compatible with an enemy that won't go away.

As people here get more an more comfortable with the idea of running "that operating system they are running overseas", my guess is that Microsoft will do what they REALLY should be doing now, port the Windows interface to either BSD or Linux as essentially a whopping big application.

Anyway, by the time this happens 10 years will have gone by, and the US will be just users of computer technology, not inventors of it.

We will rationalize this the same way we rationalize the fact that Circuit City carries no TV or stereo systems made in the US (because there are none). Computers will be just gadgets, and very cheap ones at that, and we Americans have more important things to do after all.

Only problem is I haven't figure out what those more important things are. The readers of this blog might know however. Can you run an economy exclusively based on companies suing one another?

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A lot of people wanted clarifications to terms like middleware, and wanted endless details spelled out or changed. The District Judge noted in her Tunney review remarks that Microsoft had been found guilty of violations of the antitrust laws. She also remarked that those laws can't be altered by defects in a simple agreement between the DOJ and Microsoft.

There was a 1913 agreement between the government and AT&T known as the Kingsbury Commitment. As part of this agreement, AT&T agreed to connect non-competing independent telephone companies to its network and divest its controlling interest in Western Union telegraph.

In 1949 the DOJ brought an antitrust suit against AT&T asking that it divest it's Western Electric manufacturing business. In 1956 AT&T entered into a Consent Decree that limited it to common carrier business and required it to license it's patents under resonable and non-discriminatory terms.

In 1974 the DOJ brought a subsequent antitrust suit. In 1982 AT&T agreed to a breakup. In 1984 the court simply "modified" the old 1956 Consent Decree and "The Bell System" was dead. http://www.att.com/history/histo ry3.html

Judge Sporkin claimed that the first MS/DOJ consent decree was not in the public interest. He was over-ruled but stands vindicated by history today. Microsoft violated the terms of it's first Consent Decree, and is already under it's second Consent Decree. Judge Jackson ordered a breakup. That portion of the verdict was remanded back to the lower courts for penalty phase hearings. Of course, Microsoft and the DOJ settled the matter before the hearings ever took place. One plantiff state didn't settle, and is appealing the consent decree. The European antitrust regulators have announced that Microsoft is still engaging in anti-competitive conduct. Judge Jackson's recommended remedy could very well be vidicated. The District Court was ordered on remand to craft a remedy that would make future monopolization unlikely, and unfetter the market for Intel compatible PC Operating Systems. The District Court modified the DOJ Consent Decree and changed the authority and composition of the Technical Review Committee. It's now made up of MS Executives who can be jailed for contempt, because the District Court took over enforcement of the Decree's Provisions. The Europeans incorrectly stated that Microsoft's leveraging it's Desktop Operating System to it's competitors disadvantage in the media player software market and in the market for low cost servers was unrelated to the US case. If Microsoft is still leveraging that Desktop OS monopoly after two years of voluntary compliance, then conduct remedies have clearly failed. Nothing stops either the Appeals Court or District Court from modifying a Consent Decree to order a breakup, as the AT&T history shows.

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Of course there are backdoors into Windows. That's the biggest disadvantage to running a program where you have only the binaries. Anyone that truly thinks there are no backdoors into Windows should examine the twisted history of Promis. Software for spies, and we sold it to anyone we could; of course there were backdoors into Promis also- even in the copy we sold to the Canadians (RCMP, I believe). I think there is still an ongoing court case in Canada involving Promis.

Several years ago, a multi-billion dollar videoconferencing project at Siemens for the German military went with a Linux base rather than windows, and Siemens announced that the reason was security oncerns, as in Langley VA. Approaches like M$ has just aren't going to attract and retain overseas customers. Even here, in the US, there are so many security holes in Windows that the Dept. of Homeland Security's proposed 90 million M$ purchase has come under fire. Binary-only distros are retro, holdovers from the bad old days of DOS.

Oh, as for Red Flag, I am kind of interested in seeing one of their "Internet Ready Microwave Ovens." The new trend in kitchen appliances (no, RF is not joking).

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