What Will We Use on June 30, 2011?

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. It was not for lack of things to write about. Nor am I afraid of any trolls. Instead I had to pause to take care of something in my life that has nothing to do with the question of “What will we use on June 30, 2011?”

During this time, I have been able to reflect on my surroundings. I will give you one story from my time on the ground. While in a waiting room, I met a woman who saw my netbook with my ubuntu user sticker. She proudly told me that her home has been Microsoft-free for years. When I showed her this blog, she asked me what I thought of the Bill and Melinda Foundation’s recent contribution to Pittsburgh Public Schools. I thought about it and replied that IF this is an attempt to get more Microsoft in front of children, then $40 million in 2010 is  too little too late. You see, for about 30 years a local super market chain called “Giant Eagle” has been buying Apple products for schools in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio as a customer rewards program called “Apples for Students.” Bug one was never really an issue around here – not in the 1980’s and not today. When I graduated from Baldwin High School in a suburb of Pittsburgh, I used Netscape, Applewriter, and MacOS. It was not until my first college class in 1996 that I had Microsoft products in the classroom thanks to Giant Eagle’s Apples for Students.Was it a good marketing for Giant Eagle to bet against Microsoft? Right now I’m blogging about Giant Eagle and thanking them for caring about the education of generations of children. What will the Class of 2011 of Baldwin High use? Not Microsoft.

This website and associated services has cost me over $350 for the full 2 years of service. I admit that it is a little silly

Some cold days ahead for Microsoft, thanks to radix999 on flickr

over a $20 bet. When some people make predictions, they say something without ever expecting any accountability. By being as public as possible, I have the opportunity to document the process. I celebrate both the journey and the eventual victory. Some people fly to Las Vegas for March Madness to place a wager on their favorite teams where the wager itself costs more than the trip. No matter how this goes, Nick and I are having a blast along the way.

Discussing the fate of Microsoft been so much fun, one commenter we only know as darryl wants in on the action. My hesitation is not about the money I will not bet you, darryl, 1000 United States dollars because I do not know you. Moreover, your IP address suggests you are from Australia so I don’t know how we could set up such an arrangement. By the way, you never answered my question regarding if you are a Microsoft employee.

In any case, this is my counter offer. I buy 33 shares of Red Hat. You buy 66 shares of Microsoft. Since both companies stock prices are about $30/share, we will accomplish the same idea as your proposal without ever having to meet.

For the record, I never said that Microsoft is evil. It is actually a little said says I, a Microsoft user since 1992 and a Linux user since 1999. Microsoft used to make products which made customers happy. That all changed with Vista. Without Bill Gates, Microsoft has been sinking in turbulent seas. So what is Microsoft doing about it? They’re hiring a “Competitive Marketing Manager.” and strangely, I meet the qualifications. Should I apply?

Nah… I will just stick to my wacky prediction:

Come June 30, 2011, Microsoft will no longer have majority market share.

Since I am footing the hosting bill of whatwillweuse.com, I invite you, the reader, to make your own technology prediction for 2010-2011 on my hosting dime by leaving a comment in this post. I promise to continue to host this post until at least January 4, 2012 to see what happens just for fun.

Here are some examples to get you started…

What will happen with the mobile market?

Will MySQL fork?

What will the clouds look like a year from now?

Will Steve Ballmer be fired?

How far will Apple’s market share grow?

I predicted last month that W3Counter would deliver a less-than-50% IE use on the February 2010 report thus winning 1/3 of the bet.

As I close this post, I wish to toast Microsoft itself, as your Windows have seen better days but bravo for shipping Windows 7 before calendar 2010….

circle of friends by PixelPlacebo in Flickr

I believe in something that Stephen Covey calls the “Circle of Influence.” Even though I am only one person, when I need something really important accomplished, I start with the areas of my life that I can personally change. By choice I stopped using Microsoft Office on computers I personally own in 2003. I was using MacOSX on the desktop then and with Microsoft Office. It annoyed me because its default behavior annoyed me because visited links in Power Point would not be visable in slideshow mode. There were other reasons, but I stopped using MacOSX around that time too. The tools I was using on my other computer that ran Fedora such as OpenOffice.org were far easier anyhow. I have never used Microsoft Office 2007. One time I tried to do a quick edit on someone else’s computer but I gave up on trying to use that Ribbon thing after about 5 minutes. I am a technology person and if I can not use a Microsoft product it must be seriously broken. Again, I am only one person and not a market share indicator.

I’ve asked around about office suite use. Almost everyone who had a choice in the matter is not using Microsoft Office 2007. Some have stayed put with older versions of Office. A few have moved onto OpenOffice.org, Google Docs, or Apple’s office suite called “iWork.” There are sectors in the United States, like the legal profession, who never quit using Word Perfect. Lotus Notes is still out there too. In my travels I have only found one person who prefered Microsoft Office 2007 above all other office suites. However, he admitted that he would not use Microsoft anything if he had to pay full price. Through some soft of employer-specific discount, he was using a copy he bought for $15.

Last night I attended a club meeting for general computer users. They know I am a Linux fan. I gave out copies of The OpenDisc which contains open source software for Windows, including OpenOffice.org. People were confused by my motives but joyfully accepted the gift anyhow. People were very happy that they will not have to buy a product costing hundreds of dollars just to open a document created with Microsoft Office. It makes me wonder how many people break down and buy Microsoft Office because they think they do not have a choice.

Some people only like OpenOffice.org because it can be obtained cheaply. People sell it on ebay for $9 or less. I’m OK with that. I would rather people use OpenOffice.org because it is an quality open source project that listens to user feedback. Instead I suspect that some people assume Open Office is pirated and therefore decline the option to register. That I am not OK with.

All the people who created OpenOffice.org ask from its users is some indication that people are actually using it. I too would appreciate it because I have a $20 bet to win. Without any money-oriented transaction to confirm that the license was accepted, how else will we calculate market share?

Charles-H. Schulz of the OpenOffice.org marketing team wrote a long article on the problem of counting office suite market share. Here is an except for consideration…

By this I mean that we’re having clear indications and reports that not only do people download OpenOffice.org but that they stop using Microsoft Office altogether. Of course this last trend -abandoning MS Office- is not going to be witnessed soon, for two reasons: MS Office’s market share is accounted by entreprise sales and by OEM bundling. Because Microsoft’s domination is encroached on well-known monopolistic practices, we are often put in the situation where market shares ‘ comparison ends up very much like comparing apples and bananas: The office suite market is a Microsoft Office market, with different slices owned by different pedigrees of Microsoft Office, while any outside incumbet is left at the fringe as the calculation method ignores downloads and values “entreprise sales” and OEM contracts.

It is a difficult problem but I will not give up. I will continue to pass out copies of The OpenDisc to Windows users without ever knowing if people will throw the disks in the trash. There is a possibility that people think I am trying to give them a virus because I do not use professionally pressed media. That is under consideration although it would be time consuming and expensive. I am als considering switching to DVD-RW as well, that way the new owner of the OpenDisc may choose to keep it since it has a little more value. Ideally, I would like to find a bunch of other folks who will also help distribute the OpenDisc upon professionaly pressed media.

Until we work out the details of the distribution program, I will ship anyone a free OpenDisc copy to anyone who expresses interest by responding to this post.

If we put our heads together, by June 30, 2011, Microsoft Office will not have majority market share.

In many ways, I am the exception, not the rule.

I am an American which puts me in 4.53% of the world’s population.

I am over 25 years old with a Bachelor’s degree which puts me with 27.4% of my nation’s most educated adults.

I prefer Linux, which some say put me at 1% of the computer user population. My assertion is the 1% is bogus, but that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about how I seek to reach out to the general public. I struggle with this because I am the exception not the rule. Many of my friends involved with Linux and free and open source software have pointed this out to me. This needs to change. Geek girl meet world. Here I come.

Yesterday was an exceptional day for this blog as 508 new visitors showed up, mostly due to clicking on a link back to this blog I left on the Bing blog. Still, Internet Explorer could not muster up even 5% of my website readers.

If my post to the bing blog makes me an Internet troll, I will own that. It is my intention to encourage people to at least image a world with significantly less Microsoft. Let’s just pretend, for one moment, that all Internet Explorer installations were to vanish. What would we use? How many people would panic and believe that the Internet itself had died? Five percent? Maybe Sixty percent? highly unlikely.

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that all Internet Explorer users would panic. Also, I assert that many Internet Explorer users may toggle to Firefox based on their mood. All I am saying is that Internet Explorer is not the be-all-end-all of the Internet in the hearts and mind of the majority of the general population.

In order to prove that the world can live with significantly less Microsoft, I need to reach out to the general public. This is why I signed up for Twitter. Do not worry if you are a fan of free software as I will continue to explain why non-proprietary software is better. Hopefully the choir is still with me and will sing with me.

Ultimately, I want people to question their software choices and understand they have a choice. How do I do that with out being elitist or a troll?

Yesterday when I got home from the office supply store, my husband asked, “Do you want to go to the mall?” This time we went to South Hills Village Mall which is not the same mall where I picked up my Droid. Just three weeks ago, my Droid was purchased one day after its release. My husband lovingly realizes that I am thrilled by gadgets as some girls would be thrilled by jewellery and agreed to make it my birthday present. I am still wowed by the Droid. My husband suggested that we go to the Verizon store to see if there were any Droid accessories available. They were sold out. Within line of site to the Verizon store there is a Droid display which will be staffed every holiday weekend. Yes. A whole display just for one telephone product. There were many people who stopped by to play with the many Droids on display but all but one booth employee were too shy to pose as I excitedly took a photo with my Droid. The picture you see in this post was immediately uploaded to facebook and flickr.com. No need to sync the phone with my desktop at home. This is when I realized that I was already living in the cloud.
Cloud computing that is. Google stores my calendar and contacts so I do not need to worry about backing that up to my PC. Flickr.com, a Yahoo! site, stores my photos. Facebook makes it crazy easy to share my picture that I just took on my phone with all my friends… all of this without leaving the mall. The Droid is not exactly forthcoming about being a product built on Linux and to some, this is a good idea. Still, if they would mention Linux in even a quarter of their advertising and posters, they would be by far the single marketing campaign of Linux product: far beyond the tux500. Google, Motorola, and Verizon have marketed the Droid phone as the anti-iPhone. In one TV commercial they pointed out that Google encourages open development for its “market” of apps. This is important because it allows and even encourages individuals and even competitors like Yahoo! to make applications for the Android platform. Why not go on to boast that they are built on the stability of an 18-year old operating system called Linux? The power of the Android Linux open platform is the whole power behind DroidDoes. Think that this open source mobo-jumbo can not effect the consumer, why in the world won’t Apple let Google implement voice search? Anyhow, Android Linux phones will be holiday gift giving favourite. Want your own Droid? Get it dropped straight to your back yard. My mother has already bought a phone, the Android-based Moment because she is a loyal Sprint customer. I played with it for 5 minutes and it had many of the Droid features but it was slow in comparison. Mom still intends on buying two more Moments for her sister and her brother-in-law.

At least in one corner of the South Hills Village Mall, Microsoft lacks majority market share on November 28, 2009.

A little over 3 months ago, I blogged about how Yahoo! and how the continue to compete and do well where Microsoft falters. When other bloggers speculated that Microsoft was going to acquire Yahoo!, I assured you all that Microsoft was in no position to buy Yahoo! The next day, when the 10 year Microsoft-Yahoo! deal came down. I did not call doom to Yahoo! Instead I said, “In this deal, Microsoft will do the expensive work of maintaining a search engine and Yahoo will monetise.” on my July 30, 2009 post.

Yodel Anecdotal of Flickr

I recently heard new facts from Yahoo insiders about what the Microsoft
deal is really about.

• The deal only pertains to searches executed on http://www.yahoo.com Other Yahoo! web properties such as shine, games, mail, video, finance, or flickr are unaffected.
• Yahoo! will still execute the search.
• When Yahoo! searches, it will pass the query to Bing who will return a targeted ad on http://www.yahoo.com
• Yahoo! takes Microsoft’s money for 10 years.
• With the making money off of search problem out of the way, Yahoo! can focus on monetising it’s other web properties.
• Yahoo! will get back to the business of integrating on-line communities and selling advertising.

Microsoft desperately asked Yahoo! to let Microsoft be a contractually committed Yahoo!’s loyal customer for 10 years.  I don’t blame Yahoo! for accepting this deal. Instead, I applaud them for taking Microsoft’s money while the checks still clear. Also, I predict that Yahoo!’s search results will be better quality since they will not worry about keeping the advertisers happy. It sounds like a sweet deal for Yahoo!

What does that mean for Yahoo! users? Yahoo! will succeed because they listen: Yahoo! will focus customizing your internet experience at http://you.yahoo.com

Microsoft will continue to mock their own users and deny their own failures with expensive marketing campaigns like “Windows 7, that’s my idea”

Yahoo! listens to bloggers too. CEO Carol Bartz just said so. Ms Bartz believes consumers look to blogs when making up their minds about a product.

Could this blog be making a difference?  We have been writing about the downfall of Microsoft only five months and we now have 12,000 readers, more than half of which do not use Microsoft products for their operating system or web browser. This is evidence of a real market trend that internet giant and software-as-a-service pioneer Yahoo! needs to watch.

Guess what folks, Yahoo! has asked me if I would like to come work for them. They happen to be looking sysadmins who can handle working with open source technologies in large scale deployments. While I feel flattered by the invitation to apply, but I am quite happy where I am.

Yahoo! happens to have 23 positions currently for top-notch system engineers who can work with monumental scale. They particularly need perl/python systems programmers who can engineer solutions for the unique level of complexity the user communities demands. If you would like to help Carol Bartz build awesome technology and communities that will keep Yahoo! a fierce Microsoft competitor, I urge you to apply for a Yahoo! job as a Senior Production Engineer, Service Engineer, Grid/Haddoop Engineer, and Cloud Service Storage Engineer. Serious and intelligent individuals can contact Mr. Long Phung, a Yahoo! technical recruiter. His user name on the yahoo-inc dot com domain is his first initial and last name without any punctuation. Additional openings are available at http://careers.yahoo.com.

This is an unpaid endorsement opinion of Beth Lynn Eicher.

Just to clarify, if execute a search on any other Yahoo! website besides www.yahoo.com, it was not brought to you by Bing. Furthermore, if you see a Microsoft ad on any Yahoo! site, it is because Microsoft opened their pockets independent of the deal at hand. Go ahead Yahoo! and soak Microsoft dry on all fronts.

The month of October was simply amazing. We had 3,170 unique ip addresses. When we compare it to our 869 visitors of September, that is over 350% growth. Admittedly, the increased traffic was due to a news-worthy incident that occurred in the open source community involving two of the editors of this blog. While this did increase the traffic, it was a distraction from the intended message.

This blog is only 4 months old but since we have so many new readers, it is worth restating some high points. I, Beth Lynn Eicher, bet $20 that Microsoft’s market share would be less than 50% on June 30, 2011. I am not insulted if you think I am crazy for making this claim. Every plan begins with a “YES we can!” vision. You do not need to agree with me to follow this blog.  Please comment if you disagree, especially if you are on the Microsoft payroll. All that is required is some genuine interest in intelligent discussion on Microsoft’s market share over the next 20 months. So far, the readers have been primarily from the Open Source community but this blog is also for Microsoft users so that they can discuss their satisfaction levels of Microsoft products.

The work of providing actual market share trend figures is difficult to do, especially since whatwillweuse.com is an leisure effort. I lack a marketing budget in which to buy professional projections which cost thousands of dollars. Instead, I use w3counter, a free web statistics service for websites and blogs, and follow their global statistics. In my opinion, w3counter gives the most accurate values because it allows regular people like me to allow the people in my social network to be counted. Competing products are only available to those with products to sell which I suspect is heavily weighted by what professional buyers are using in wealthy English speaking countries. Since quite a few Search Engine Optimization blogs have linked my post on how and why w3counter is useful to you, me, and everybody, I am convinced that community-oriented web statistics with w3counter yield excellent results. If you are a blogger of any sort and want to get some free statistics on who your readers are, I highly recommend w3counter, regardless of what operating system and web browser you use.

Alright, on with the statistics arleady. Here is the traffic we observed on whatwillweuse.com out of 3,170 unique visitors….

First Web Browsers:

1. Firefox      3,398      58%
2. Safari     815     14%
3. Mozilla     551     9%
4. Identification Blocked     335     6%
5. Internet Explorer     275     5%
6. Chrome     207     4%
7. Opera     70     1%

Operating Systems:

1.  Linux      2,524      43%
2.  Mac OS X     1,174     20%
3.  Windows XP     1,101     19%
4.  Unknown     415     7%
5.  Windows Vista     371     6%
6.  Windows 7     168     3%
7.  iPhone OSX     38     <1%

Click on the W3Counter logo to see the Browser/Operating system global report for October 2009

Notes on the global browser statistics:

Microsoft has less than 52% market share if you include IE6 which Microsoft no longer supported by Microsoft. If you ignore IE6 because it is a retired product as far as Microsoft is concerned,  Microsoft has only 38.39% of the browser market share.

Notes on the global operating systems:

These statistics do not break out full licensed copies of Windows 7 from the Release Candidate. Keep in mind that both MacOSX and Linux increased their market share during the month of the Windows 7 launch.

Notes on global diversity:

64.2% of the statistics are from non-English speaking countries.

Microsoft will have less than 50% market share on June 30, 2011.

On American paper money, you will find the phrase “In God We Trust.” Even though it is Constitutionally not a requirement to believe that phrase literally, it goes to show you that there are very few things that Americans hold above the all mighty dollar. Therefore, the things that make us part with our wealth had better be worth it.

A cash machine running Windows is hung. Click on the image to see the orginal on flickr. Thanks to the photographer "tim_b

My belief in software freedom is not about how much I am willing to pay for it. I am not alone. Ken Starks recently blogged about how Linux users are more willing to pay for software than their Windows user counterparts.

I am considering buying Windows 7 for the purpose of research for this blog. In my “what should I use” post I discussed the fact that I now have a PC with Microsoft Vista. Since then, I approved the EULA. Not because I agree with it but because I wanted to try Vista for myself.

So far, it has been slow going.

In fairness, the software that I have become accustomed to, such as virtual desktops, do not come by default with that operating system. Even if I shell out hundreds of dollars for Microsoft Windows 7, which is supposedly great, I will need to spend days of my time hunting down the applications and installing them to fit the way I have wired my brain over the past 10 years of being a Linux on the desktop user.

Change is painful, even for an ubergeek like me. I too need to accept that those accustomed to Microsoft Windows will have similar conversion troubles and emotions. Does a reluctance to try something new equal trust in status quo? I think not.

Which leads me to my next point, how did I get to from a Microsoft user to a Linux user? When I had my first computer at home, I loved Microsoft and its products. Microsoft earned my trust by providing me something that no other desktop operating system could in 1992, a command line: MSDOS. There was only one other serious desktop operating system back then, and it was a graphical-only pre-UNIX/Darwin MacOS. I loved MSDOS to the point that if UNIX-based operating systems like Linux, BSD, MacOSX, or Solaris did not exist, I would still be using MSDOS. Why? The command line was very straight forward. It did not hide the details of what exactly was running on your PC with distractions such as screen savers, icons, cascading windows, etc. Instead it told the truth about what your PC was doing. You know what, it took seconds to boot. When it was time to close up for the night, you exited the ONE application you were running and then hit the power button. I felt respected as a user compared to the get-a-cup-of-coffee boot times that my MAC user friends experienced in that era. Who could forget the acronym: Most Applications Crash If Not Then Operating System Hangs.

Microsoft meant stability pre-Windows 95. Imagine no blue screens of death. No patch Tuesday. No digital rights management. No need to prove your product that you bought was authentic. Instead, when you bought software you bought a product that took your money and kept out of your business.

Windows 95 was the first time I felt like Microsoft betrayed me. It introduced the blue screen of death. For the first time, the graphical interface was the operating system, not a layer on top of it. Some may call this innovation, but I to this day see this is a dishonest trick to hide from the users what is really going on. None the less, people liked it. I even used it, supported it, and installed it oodles of times. To some, it had a Hollywood level of fun to PC computing. Bill Gates paid the licensing for the Rolling Stones tune “Start Me Up” and people were hooked.

While I see the start menu as a technical step back, it was great marketing. It was also an obvious copy of what MACOS was doing at the time. Today, any desktop operating system will have some form of application launcher. This includes Linux.

The start menu was part of the Microsoft brand until Vista in which it phased in a Windows circle which added to the list of many frustrations that Windows 9x/XP users had with the Vista operating system.

While I have not tried Windows 7, I have seen many folks in the Linux community jokingly point out that it looks like the popular Linux environment, KDE4.

The loss of the start menu branding consistency paired with the “innovation” of the Microsoft Office ribbon confuses users. This leads to distrust of Microsoft from the user base.

I believe Microsoft distrust will cause users to do one of the following:

• Apple agrees that this moment Windows users who have lostMicrosoft trust may switch to their products. So much so, they have a wholemarketing campaign.
• Those who mistrust both Microsoft and Apple with their money will look to Linux systems as desktops. USAToday thinks so too. As of today, my mother uses Ubuntu and Xandros. Other babyboomers are likely to follow as they network with people like my mother and see they can do everything they want to do without Windows.Non-MacOSX BSD-based desktops will continue to be a novelty among geeks and will see next to no growth.

Before I close, I leave you with this thought. Please do comment…

Do you trust Microsoft with your money so much that you would willfully use Windows as an Automatic Teller Machine?

Microsoft will lack majority market share June 30, 2011.

It has been a week now since the Windows 7 release. I confess that I had not picked up my own copy in the store yet. Seeing that I don’t live near a brick and mortar Microsoft store, I have two choices to get Microsoft’s freshest operating system: 1. Best Buy 2. any office supply big box store. One office supply store mailed me a postcard offering a “free Windows 7 installation” and I assume that means the labor to install the operating system is free. Since there is no fine print on the card, I would have to go to the store to find out.

If it were not for this one postcard and the Today show, I would not have been reminded about the Windows 7 release. I am an IT professional and a huge geek. I thought I would be swimming in Microsoft gloat right about now.

For those who did not see it, Steve Ballmer appeared on the Today show which is a morning magazine show on NBC American TV. Matt Lauer was the interviewing host for the 5 minute Windows 7 launch segment.

Youtube has it on video but I will do my best to summarize.

Mr Lauer opened with a joke where he explained that most people don’t understand the difference between an operating system and an operating room.
Mr. Lauer asked Mr. Ballmer to compare to 7 to Vista. Mr Ballmer answered it boots faster – immediately up and running, better battery life on the laptops, the user interface being simplier and “snappier”
When asked to demonstrate “snappier” Charlotte Jones was introduced, a group project manager for Microsoft. Ms. Jones then raved about the variety of hardware available with Windows 7. Netbooks, a gamer PC, a thin and ultra light laptop – the Dell Domino XPS, and a touch PC: Sony Vaio L.
The discussion turned to home entertainment. “The computer can be the center of your media life ” and “Consumers will by 65% of the PCs in the world this year so we’ve got to make them fun” said Ballmer.
Mr. Lauer brought up the popularity of Apple products, especially the iPhone. Portability is the wave of the future, but Ballmer isn’t worried because people still like big screen.
When asking about desktop consumer market share, Mr. Lauer inquired how Mr. Ballmer expects to keep “it above 90%?” Instead of discussing software invovation, Mr. Ballmer said
“You are not going to find this cool diversity of hardware from anybody else with our family of Windows partners.”

When the interview was finshed, Mr. Lauer disclosed that Microsoft is part owner of MSNBC.com

I don’t know why, I was expecting more hype around this particular product. You can’t turn on an American TV without seeing an ad for Bing. Even radio is getting in on the Bing plugs. A top40 radio station near me has a dj who has been paid to plug Bing hourly but never does not mention Windows 7.

Microsoft took some risks in their marketing of Windows 7. They attempted to sponsor house parties for the Windows 7 launch. The host got a copy of Windows 7 and a deck of playing cards. Did anybody go? My friend Carol Rutz hosted a party where only one guest came.

Does anybody celebrate the launch of an operating system? Well, it just so happens that there is a Ubuntu  9.10 release party this Friday night which is 15 miles from where I live. I’ll let you all know if anyone shows up. The great thing about a Ubuntu release party is that everyone may install for free at the release party – not just the host.

Microsoft will lose majority market share by June 30, 2011.

As an American, I see the “Noboby gets fired for buying Microsoft”
continuing to the the commonplace. Microsoft’s products have a habit of forcing institutions to deploy more of their products and upgrade their products. Take this example of how SharePoint 2007 is such a drag with Office XP or 2003 that customers cave and upgrade to Office 2007. Don’t they know that there are outstanding patent issues with Word 2007? Well, at least Motorola got the memo.

Well, Toronto Mayor, David Miller did get the memo. As Mr. Miller wrote in a proclamation:

“Through Open Source, communities, cities and nations around the world are presented with the opportunity to promote and actively nurture an environment of learning, collaboration and innovation.”

Apparently, Mr. Miller was so impressed by Open Source that he named this last week in October “Open Source Week.” On October 24, 2009, to kickoff the celebration for what Open Source has done for Canadians and the world, the Ontario LinuxFest has planned quite the speaker lineup: starting with a keynote from Zonker on how the Linux community can make the year of the Linux desktop a reality.

An inherent trust in Microsoft’s products seems to be an American theme. Outside the Untied States, it might be a different story. I am going to the Ontario LinuxFest to investigate.

Microsoft will lose majority market share: June 30, 2011.