Ballmer: Linux as Microsoft's enemy No. 1
SeattlePI | at | by Mike
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is telling his employees to focus on the threat that Linux and other free programs available on the Internet pose to sales at the world's largest software maker. The programs are called open source because thousands of developers on the Web can collaborate to tweak and customize the underlying code. They may undercut Ballmer's plan to counter slowing sales of personal computers by selling more software for the server machines that run company networks and Web sites.
"We have told our sales force to really understand that this is kind of job one," Ballmer, 46, said in an interview last week. "People are saying by and large, 'It might be easier for me to move my Unix apps to Linux than to Windows,' although we're pretty close to making that untrue."