Ballmer: "Linux is a serious competitor"

Although Microsoft cannot compete against Linux on price, the company will use its community of professionals to outsmart the open source movement, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer told an audience of Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) in London this week.

"Linux is a serious competitor," said Ballmer. "We have to compete with free software, on value, but in a smart way. We cannot price at zero, so we need to justify our posture and pricing. Linux isn't going to go away - our job is to provide a better product in the marketplace."

He acknowledged there was more to Linux than free software - the main benefit of the open-source movement was the community developing software and sharing ideas. "Linux is not about free software, it is about community," he said. "It's not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money - it started off bankrupt, in a way."

Technology like clustering would be better in Windows than Linux eventually, said Ballmer: "We will beat Linux on clusters. We can't beat them on price, but we have to add value."

Asked whether Microsoft planned to offer applications software on Linux, Ballmer said no. "We do not anticipate offering software on Linux. Nobody pays for software on Linux." Even StarOffice, sold by Sun, was originally a free product, he said. And IBM, arguably the No. 1 player in the Linux market, promotes Linux to big users, but does not actually sell Linux: "It's weird! IBM says 'Hey British Aerospace! Buy Linux.... From SuSE."

The big issue there, he said, was a reluctance to accept legal liability for open-source software.

Peter Judge writes for ZDNet.co.uk