Tom Yager dusted off his crystal ball this morning in order to answer the question “where will Linux thrive?”
He also made a prediction regarding the effect of Apple’s Unix on the future of Linux.
That makes it sound like Linux has a fairly bright future ahead of it. Another forecast within the same article made things sound less certain, though.
“Apple’s Unix – or who knows what it’ll be called by then – will overtake commercial Linux in rate of revenue growth by the end of 2007,” Yager wrote.
“By mid-2008, Apple’s sales of systems with factory-installed Apple Unix will exceed the total combined sales of x86 systems factory-shipped with commercial Linux,” he continued. “At the end of the decade, we’ll find that Apple Unix has overtaken commercial Linux as the second most popular general client and server computing platform behind Windows.”
Yager then qualified his statements so as not to upset Linux followers.
“Understand what I’m saying: Apple isn’t going to win or even wage a religious war with Linux,” he wrote. “There will be more money than ever to be made with Linux, but sales won’t derive from a model fashioned to compete with Windows and OS X. Microsoft and Apple will be the top-seeded fighters in general client and server computing platforms. Linux doesn’t need or want to be the third man in that ring.”
Yager then made a request: “don’t get rankled by my prediction that Linux is going underground. It will thrive there.”
Given that the starting question was “where will Linux thrive?” Linux fans can be proud that its success was considered inevitable.
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Doug is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest eBusiness news.
