Redhat to buy Microsoft (dubious speculation department)

H. Steele Price, IV — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 14:41:00 GMT

After seeing industry stalwarts AT&T sold to SBC and IBM dumping its PC Division to the Chinese, is there doubt there may be a similar fate in Microsoft's future?

Not that something like this will happen anytime soon, it just goes to show that all the bellyaching people did over AT&T being the evil big monster didn't really have anything to do with its demise.

AT&T crumbled because it chose not to change its core business. Instead of embracing VoIP years ago when Cisco first came up with the idea, getting out of the Voice market and into Internet Services like it should have, they rapidly eroded by not changing with the technology they had a lot do do with inventing.

AT&T, Bell Labs and Lucent made contributions to the Fiber backbone that powers most of the Internet, similarly Microsoft has IMO made the single most important contribution to the PC Industry, deciding that a reasonable environment for standards programming was important to make the industry thrive. With the API for Windows, Microsoft contributed the single environment that drove the industry for nearly the past 20 years.

.NET has the potential to be that same core in the future and with it's sibling, Project Mono it has a chance to stay in the game, but for how long? If change comes at a glacial pace as it is starting to with Longhorn, then they may not be able to hold on to the deathgrip they currently have in the industry.

Hopefully, Microsoft will refocus it's base and start really being the innovative leader it has been in the past instead of trying to just shut out the other guy with evil tactics like weilding Patents like weapons of mass destruction.

Personally, I don't think Linux has a chance in hell of becoming the market leader, I would look at Apple taking that crown before I would Redhat or Novell. We are most likely going to see a completely new OS coming in the next 5 years that changes everything and Microsoft won't know what hit them, unless of course that OS comes from Microsoft. It really could, but it's definately NOT going to be Longhorn.

I don't think that the market will actually start to shift all that much in the next 5 years, but it should at least become apparent that something else is out there and it will start to gain a following. Nothing is out today that has enough potential in polished form to present itself as the new torch-bearer.

So who is going to write it? Is it you? If so, let me in on your secret :) For Today, I'd just be happy to replace my Shell with one that offers a little more ease of use. That certainly isn't Linux. Programmers are smart enough to figure out a better way to do installations and conflict resolution than they currently offer.

Pure Speculation

Redhat to buy Microsoft (dubious speculation department)