Or... Steve Ballmer tells a bunch of people in London that they see Linux as a threat and are addressing it.
Although Microsoft cannot compete against Linux on price, the company will use its community of professionals to outsmart the open-source movement, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer told an audience of Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) in London.
"Linux is a serious competitor," said Ballmer. "We have to compete with free software, on value, but in a smart way. We cannot price at zero, so we need to justify our posture and pricing. Linux isn"t going to go away--our job is to provide a better product in the marketplace." Fingers crossed kiddies ;)
He acknowledged there was more to Linux than free software--the main benefit of the open-source movement was the community developing software and sharing ideas. "Linux is not about free software, it is about community," he said. "It"s not like Novell, it isn"t going to run out of money--it started off bankrupt, in a way."
Technology like clustering would be better in Windows than Linux eventually, said Ballmer: "We will beat Linux on clusters. We can"t beat them on price, but we have to add value." The MVP initiative will be a big part of Microsoft"s efforts to promote a sense of "community" among users and developers, connecting its own product developers with the users most in touch with product issues.