IBM's Duncan: Microsoft "Putting Its Top Partners In A Corner"
in italy last month, i met with a large application sw firm focused on the mid-market. they have thousands of customers and have decided to make the move to linux. why? ....because microsoft was competing more and more against them with their navision and great plains offerings and more of their customers were asking for an open solution. now this, in and of itself, is not exactly news. i believe microsoft is putting its top partners in a corner in almost every country in the world. what was interesting here is the italian isv is going to move to linux, but keep their visual basic development environment. the objective was not to find new developers, but to have an alternative to microsoft.
Duncan also wrote: "if i were a student today (or professional developer), i know where i would build my skills. the fastest growing operating system platform continues to be linux."
Actually, there are some folks who believe Visual Basic is still the technology of, um, the future. (Hat Tip: The Farm.)