IBM fired the opening salvo at this year’s LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, and to the surprise of no one, it was aimed squarely at Microsoft. Sure, it was the low-hanging fruit — Microsoft’s an easy target. It’s kind of like taking pot shots at John McCain at an Obama fund-raiser. But here, the ammunition was more notable than the target. IBM’s initiative hits at Microsoft — and proprietary software in general — on five fronts, from supercomputers to middleware to the average personal computer.
