[Solar-general] el plan secreto de microsoft contra gnu/linux

Mie Feb 23 16:05:31 CET 2005

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1768172,00.asp

How to Kill Linux
02.22.05
Dvorak
  Total posts: 11

By John C. Dvorak

While chatting over dinner with the executives of a middleware company during
the recent RSA conference for encryption and security in San Francisco, I
heard about a secret project. It concerned the development of a version of
Linux that runs smoothly as a task under Windows. The project was completed
and then shelved. Whether it will ever reemerge is doubtful, but it does offer
some interesting possibilities and hints as to what Microsoft may be up to
with MS-Linux.
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The immediate usefulness of Linux running under Windows is obvious. You can
use all the Windows drivers for all the peripherals that don't run under
Linux. Drivers have always been an issue with Linux as PC users have gotten
spoiled with Windows driver support. Today's user wants to grab just about
anything and not worry about installing it and making it work.

That said, there is no way Linux under Windows would be practical with all the
overhead involved. So this notion comes to mind: How about eliminating the
middleman? The idea here would be to cut the driver layer out of Windows and
attach it to Linux directly. This would become MS-Linux. If Microsoft actually
produced an MS-Linux that was the standard Linux attached to the driver layer
of Windows, giving users full Plug and Play (PnP) support of all their
peripherals, nobody would buy any other Linux on the market. Well, except for
the fact that Microsoft would be unable to produce such a product without
allowing the other vendors access to the driver code as part of the
open-source Linux license arrangement (GPL). You can be sure that Microsoft
lawyers are studying this as closely as possible to see if there is any way
they could market a dominant Linux distribution without killing themselves. So
how could they do this?

Open-source law is new and not completely tested. I'm certain that Microsoft
got involved with the SCO versus Linux lawsuit partly to reach a better
understanding of how to proceed.

Well, here's one idea: This concept will benefit only Microsoft and probably
result in the death of Linux altogether. Let's call it the lopped-off head
approach. Microsoft takes its distribution of Linux and sells it as a
lopped-off head. — Continue Reading

-- 
Diego Saravia 
dsa en unsa.edu.ar