Very smart of Microsoft

actually, "marketing" has never been a strong suit for them either. It's their "LEGAL" manipulations of vendors and compebreastors that has made them king of the dirty hill. Their tricky MS-DOS contract with IBM put them on top by default, and that wasn't anything related to marketing, it was a "legal maneuver" by Bill's Dad. www.prestongates.com - Technically they have been a mbuttive failure in the marketing arena, they can't sell anything unless they illegally ripoff a product line from a compebreastor. (QDOS, Mac, PlayStation and now Linux)

Yes, Vista is probably the end of the line for NT, they are going to Unix with this move, just how bad they bungle it remains to be seen. (the windows sheep will follow just like they always have)

And, by the way Apple doesn't live or die by the OS, it's only a small portion of their sales. Hardware is still 70% of Apple, OS and services the remaining 25% or so. Apple has expanded into a Music powerhouse, and soon will alter Television not seen since "Color" was introduced in the early 50's. Apple actually has wider view than MS, but is careful to only introduce products that can be hugely successful, not fumble around like MS prefers to do.

yes.

Yes, this is MS's old bag of tricks, it's almost their "pre-announce" trick, then all compebreastors die, or no longer can get investments, since "Big bad MS is heading into their market". Expect most all money flowing into the Linux market to dry up. If you had a dream of making money with Linux, that dream is now gone.

yes, see above.

Nah, when MS makes a move like this, it's to kill off compebreastion... for old timers, you may remember what happened to Bob Metcalf at 3Com (inventor of ethernet by the way)

-- Bob of 3Com likened a disastrous joint marketing venture with Gates in the late 1980's to "black widow spiders mating - you'd be lucky to get out alive" Metcalf said Microsoft double-crossed 3Com and precipitated his company's first multi-million dollar quarterly loss in 1991.

The same thing will happen to Novell, they are toast!

possibly.

I wouldn't be to sure of the above... If MS takes control over a Linux version, all others (even the free distros) will simply fade away. MS will put in hooks so only their software works. I can easily see them adding Microsoft Office to Linux now, but oddly enough it only runs on MS's version. Once something like that happens, with such a flagship product, all other versions of Linux are hosed.

Nah, Apple is the fastest growing Server vendor in the industry and will remain that way for many years to come, they won't be affected by MS's move. Apple builds the upper range of easy to maintain Unix based systems, so if anything this will increase Apple's momentum... since people in the know, buy Apple products over MS every time.

Apple's Xserve and OSX Server is the low cost leader when it comes to sophisticated server solutions, it's one of Apple's fastest growing areas and will only grow faster if MS puts their stamp on Unix.

yes, this is really, "enter, embrace, confuse, divide, extend, extinguish" so if MS does what they usually do, this event will mark the point when Linux finally grows up, 70% of Linux vendors will disappear, and MS will own & control the Linux space in 10 years time.

-