Trybuntu Blog

Open source (and in many cases open platforms) is headed our way in force. That’s the message coming out of every major manufacturing company today. No longer are companies willing to pay the price (in money and the intentional depression of technology) by catering to Microsoft and its proprietary architectures and related policies and procedures.

I think in truth end consumers don’t really care whether or not they have Windows-powered devices or something else. It is the vendors themselves, the manufacturers and carriers who are saying “No” to Microsoft in this regard, opting instead for the platform which will get the job done (perhaps even with better graphics, speed, less bugs, faster update times, etc.) while making them more money. You see, a lot of the expense in Windows-powered devices does not come from the device itself, but from the Windows license paid to Microsoft, which for netbooks is reportedly up to $50 per machine, a fee the OEMs must collect by passing along that expense to end consumers.

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Intel last week bought for $884 million Wind River Systems, a venerable embedded operating system company — yet another of the chip giant’s recent forays into software. The reason for this purchase is both simple and grand — to help Intel vertically integrate and to further its Linux ambitions. Intel’s ultimate target with this purchase is Microsoft. It’s all about kicking Redmond out of the netbook business.

This is a huge change for Intel, which has for decades acted as Microsoft’s bitch, doing pretty much whatever Redmond demanded for fear of being written-out of the next Windows PC hardware spec in favor of AMD or even IBM. But that was the old Microsoft. The Microsoft of today isn’t nearly as powerful, whether they yet know it or not.

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