News.com. Steve Ballmer talks about .Net and Linux. In my view, Microsoft needs to ship apps that show off the new .Net paradigm (apps on the desktop that take advantage of remote functionality/data). Without this demonstration of innovation, this is all just smoke and mirrors. Here is what he has to say about Linux:
...our product is a more complete product. We have a built-in application server that's well integrated; there is no such comparable notion in the Linux server. We have a directory server built in; there is no such comparable thing in Linux. The Linux client hardly runs any applications, except a bunch of shareware stuff that's not very good.
I think it's not complete, it's a poor value proposition vs. Windows. It is a clone 0f an operating system. There has yet to be any innovation, new features or new capabilities out of the Linux platform. First they cloned Unix, and there are people working on cloning some of our stuff. But it's just a cloning operating system. That doesn't mean we can stand still--we have to push along. But I don't think anyone should expect anything innovative coming out of that world. There's no data to support that.
