Advance Notice of Big Change in Computer Operation System Market

There isn`t any one eternal power in the world’s business. The stronghold of the Microsoft who has been reigning as an absolute power in the software industry for 20 years is rocking. It is due to the successful challenge of the Linux, an open source computer operation system who opened the original program to the public at no charge. Microsoft who did not have a good rival after the Netscape, an Internet Search Program, suddenly is tensed.

▽Linux Movement = The recent edition (dated 3rd) of the Business Week reported that the Linux already has passed the Unix in the business server market and is gradually gaining on the market share of the window, the operation system of the Microsoft as its cover story. The magazine introduced that the Linux Movement is expanding in the field with the world’s large IT corporations competitively putting up the computer servers employed by the Linux.

The Nihongeizai Newspaper of Japan also analyzed on the 27th through an article titled ‘A wall to the growth strategy of the powerful OS’, that the Microsoft has faced an emergency with the challenges of the stagnated PC market as well as the Linux. After the analysis of the recent worldwide Internet Crash as a result of the Microsoft Server`s security problem, many governments of Germany, China, India and more started to encourage usages and developments of open source programs such as the Linux as they be cautious about the excessive reliance on the Microsoft.

▽The Challenge of Linux throughout last 12 years = Linux is an operation system developed by Linus Torvalds, a computer engineer from Finland in 1987. He decided to open the source, the backbone of the program to the public on August 25th, 1991, thus allowed anybody to download or add any of the desired functions. On the other side, after the DOS which was giving commands in letters to the computers, Microsoft developed the Window series in which allows working in the graphic environment and have persisted the policy of a complete private charged service.

The recent popularity of the Linux started off from the situation of businesses that were suffering from the recession replacing their servers with the cheaper Linux as well as the production of the processors for the Linux by Intel who was in a coexistent relationship with Microsoft. The Business Week analyzed that the repulsions on the long lasted monopoly of Microsoft played a part in the Linux` popularity.

▽The anxious Microsoft = In 1998, the President of MS, Steve Ballmer, stated, “I don’t even pay any attention to the Linux.” However, the executives of Microsoft stated a year later, “The Linux is like a cancer of the intellectual asset security” and started to ‘pay an attention’ to it in reality. Moreover, Microsoft has been driven to execute the experiments on testing the functions of the two in public.

Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, proposed on the 26th that he would visit Japan and ‘open the source information of the Window to the public’. It is a link of a ‘Government Security Program (GSP)’ that provides the source information to the government organs and the organizations in the world under the condition of secret protection. This proposal has been explained as a marketing technique of Microsoft to break off the popularity of the Linux in the public server market with its yet advanced market dominancy but the success of it is questionable.

Rae-Jeong Park ecopark@donga.com