Sun CEO Mum on GPLv3, Reveals Licensing Hopes, Jun 30, 2007

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz will not discuss GNU general public license version 3, but will share his fantasy concerning open source licensing.

technobeast: Comparatively do you see the Linux OS becoming more mainstream in the future. to perhaps rival Windows even on the personal PC's? What is your vision over the OS competition?

KK: Most people and companies that I know are already using GNU/Linux on the personal PCs. There are very few cases where people still rely, for backwards compatibility, on some proprietary software that they had committed themselves to, long ago. It may be just my environment, but I do see GNU/Linux as THE mainstream operating system. It's just a pity that hardware vendors are still forced to deliver their PCs with proprietary software installed. But that will change sooner or later, some markets already offer PCs and Notebooks with GNU/Linux preinstalled. Which is important, because most users nowadays don't want to install and configure anything by themselves, neither Linux nor Windows, they want to buy a PC and start working right away. Most don't even care what software is installed, they just want to write documents and have all hardware working as needed. You can do this with any operating system, so why spend money and a "usage license" FOR proprietary software if you can have an open system, preinstalled and preconfigured, for less? Every operating system and application is dedicated for a specific purpose. For some people, Windows/Word/Excel/... may be the appropriate solution, for others it is the GNU/Linux suite with its office applications. If you have to make a decision, you should decide by what you want to do with the computer, and just do a cost/benefit analysis. I don't think that speaking of a "competition" is useful. Every OS and application has its advantages and disadvantages. Some may find KDE more easy to use than the Windows environment, others may disagree. People should have a choice, and the possibility to decide on their own, that's my opinion.