It is interesting to see how once again that someone is claiming that Linux is going to fall behind and fizzle out, although in these paragraphs this is not the direct claim, they do however on the same page claim “Nonetheless, Microsoft is doing what no single Linux vendor, or association of such vendors, have accomplished so far: It's putting these new standards together and making a working information sharing system out of them. And it is putting their own products, servers, and services squarely in the middle.” This appears to me that another visionary feels that Linux is threatened by open standards, which are somehow Open Standards that use closed products, servers, and services – in other words it is some strange usage of the word Open in the computer industry that I am unaware of.
The fact is that if they are open standards, Linux will support them in no time. This includes document formats, and especially Microsoft’s XML Web services and the .NET platform. There are projects in the Open Source community everywhere attempting to get a hold on these strategies. In fact they claim that Office 12 will change the way users interact with their computers, when has Microsoft not made this claim? They always make claims like this, every Windows release and every other new product. Hell they said Windows 98 was faster than Windows 95.
In the Open Source world they are also working on restructuring XML so it works around the Operating System. They are also working on a million other things. One thing Microsoft seem eager to give away is near perfect cross platform compatibility with .NET which is also work in progress with Mono and other things. This could very well give Linux, Solaris, Mac Os X, etc the power to run almost any new Windows application. Compatibility layers are in progress, and it is a hell of a lot easier to cover the API’s for .NET than with wine.
GNU/Linux always have and always will cover their tracks, and just like any other project or organisation they will get ahead, behind, and wherever at times. Linux is not dead, I don’t think it ever will be.