Microsoft's present marketing-blurb overtures in the direction of
free/open source scream that they are aware of it also.
Even that will quieten down, when the effluent from the quagmire of
their own creation fills their mouths, as they go under for the
final time.
Nothing would make me happier than if I believed this. Unfortunately,
they continue to do one thing right where the non-commercial Linux
distros have consistently failed, and this prevents the scenario that
you suggest from happening. That is, they provide a platform that the
non-technical user can install and maintain without a guru at their
disposal.
We're not there, and I don't see much motion in that direction.
If you
expect the Windows crowd to start reading Linux books and becoming
computer-literate, that's not realistic. There will always be more
people who don't read the books than those who do, and what _they_
choose will still drive the whole system. It doesn't matter how many
times we tell them why we _know_ their machines are holier than a piece
of Swiss cheese. They don't understand and it's just noise to them. As
long as we insist on the current paradigm, Linux will continue to be the
choice of professionals and largely unusable by the general public.
There's no reason we can't make the product usable for the larger,
computer-as-appliance group without diluting what it does for the
software professional.
--
Seth Goodman