Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, during an appearance here Friday at the Computer History Museum, expressed no fear of Linux usurping Windows in the software industry.

Speaking to technologists, Gates touched briefly on a number of topics ranging from Linux to Web services to grid computing and digital rights management. As far as Linux goes, Microsoft has seen other potential threats to its dominance come and go, Gates stressed.

“Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It’s a good thing we have museums to document that,” said Gates, eliciting laughter from the audience at the museum. “I’m not saying, ‘This computer will go away,’ but OS/2 was supposed to kill us.”

IBM, with 10 times the number of employees as Microsoft, could not stop Windows with OS/2, he noted.

“The same thing was said that Novell will kill us, Borland will kill us, and that makes my job interesting,” Gates said.

An audience member said that almost 50 percent of servers being purchased today are running Linux. But Gates disputed the figure. “It’s just not a right number,” Gates said. “Well over 50 percent of servers that are sold run Windows Server,” he said.
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Source : InfoWorld