Microsoft To Offer Linux
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has announced that it will be offering Linux from Q2 2000. The surprise announcement was made in a statement issued from the office of CEO Bill Gates (RICH: BSTD) today.
"Microsoft has been behind Linux from the start," said Gates, "because we are committed to offering our customers a full range of choices within the Microsoft portfolio."
The new product will follow the Microsoft strategy of branding products with the year before they are released, so will be called Microsoft(R) Linux(tm)99. Microsoft promises a host of new features, including a rewritten kernel which runs only on Intel processors, support for Windows applications under emulation, and "an enhanced object model." This last is likely to be the most controversial offering, as it will make Microsoft Linux effectively incompatible with all other flavours, and will run only software written with Microsoft's programming tools.
"We don't perceive this as a problem," asserted Gates, "for a start the Unix world has always supported several different flavours, and in any case we have now bought the patent rights to both C and C++ so in future it will be a violation of licensing agreements to compile either language for any other target than MS-Linux or Windows."
Asked about reliability, scalability and the use of open standards, Gates admitted: "Yes, Linux does offer these things, but we should be able to engineer them out by the time of the first Service Pack, which is scheduled for Quarter 3, 2000. We've already ported a large number of important bugs from NT, and remember that we managed to make NT both bloated and chronically unreliable despite it being based on the hugely stable VMS kernel."
Asked why Linux, Gates offered the following explanation: "We want to make sure people don't need to go anywhere else for software. If that fails, we have to settle for them being unable to go elsewhere, but that is definitely second best - hence our policy of 'Embrace, Extend, Exterminate'. We produce a product ourselves and offer it at a loss-leader price before we buy the inventors or force them out of business. Partly this helps to get the price [of their stock] down so we can buy them cheaper, and partly it just gives us a kick seeing them try to match our pricing without the revenue from Windows to underpin their pathetic little companies.
"Open Source undermines the whole system of capitalism, and is a subversive technology, so clearly we have to get in there early and nip it in the bud. It's like the Internet: if we hadn't started to make IE and ship it free, other software companies might have made money out of mass market software. Before we came into the market you could run the latest browsers on old 386 hardware under operating systems like OS/2. If PCs aren't made obsolete every couple of years, people with Intel shares are screwed. I've got Intel shares. It was vital that we get in there and force the Internet into the platform-dependent bloatware arena. It took a while, but we're prety much there now, and society is better off as a result. These open-source guys, their OS runs on a 286! They are the enemies of society. Commies. It's our solemn duty to wipe them off the face of the earth, in the name of Freedom, Democracy and the American Way."
"Microsoft has been behind Linux from the start," said Gates, "because we are committed to offering our customers a full range of choices within the Microsoft portfolio."
The new product will follow the Microsoft strategy of branding products with the year before they are released, so will be called Microsoft(R) Linux(tm)99. Microsoft promises a host of new features, including a rewritten kernel which runs only on Intel processors, support for Windows applications under emulation, and "an enhanced object model." This last is likely to be the most controversial offering, as it will make Microsoft Linux effectively incompatible with all other flavours, and will run only software written with Microsoft's programming tools.
"We don't perceive this as a problem," asserted Gates, "for a start the Unix world has always supported several different flavours, and in any case we have now bought the patent rights to both C and C++ so in future it will be a violation of licensing agreements to compile either language for any other target than MS-Linux or Windows."
Asked about reliability, scalability and the use of open standards, Gates admitted: "Yes, Linux does offer these things, but we should be able to engineer them out by the time of the first Service Pack, which is scheduled for Quarter 3, 2000. We've already ported a large number of important bugs from NT, and remember that we managed to make NT both bloated and chronically unreliable despite it being based on the hugely stable VMS kernel."
Asked why Linux, Gates offered the following explanation: "We want to make sure people don't need to go anywhere else for software. If that fails, we have to settle for them being unable to go elsewhere, but that is definitely second best - hence our policy of 'Embrace, Extend, Exterminate'. We produce a product ourselves and offer it at a loss-leader price before we buy the inventors or force them out of business. Partly this helps to get the price [of their stock] down so we can buy them cheaper, and partly it just gives us a kick seeing them try to match our pricing without the revenue from Windows to underpin their pathetic little companies.
"Open Source undermines the whole system of capitalism, and is a subversive technology, so clearly we have to get in there early and nip it in the bud. It's like the Internet: if we hadn't started to make IE and ship it free, other software companies might have made money out of mass market software. Before we came into the market you could run the latest browsers on old 386 hardware under operating systems like OS/2. If PCs aren't made obsolete every couple of years, people with Intel shares are screwed. I've got Intel shares. It was vital that we get in there and force the Internet into the platform-dependent bloatware arena. It took a while, but we're prety much there now, and society is better off as a result. These open-source guys, their OS runs on a 286! They are the enemies of society. Commies. It's our solemn duty to wipe them off the face of the earth, in the name of Freedom, Democracy and the American Way."
