Proxy Wars

In the Bob Cringely column I linked to this morning, he mentions that AMD is "doing whatever Redmond [Microsoft] tells it to". I'm assuming (and could of course be very very wrong) this means that Microsoft is providing AMD with some financial backing in exchange for getting some measure of control.

What's interesting is that it makes perfect sense for Microsoft to do this - so long as prices in processors (and therefore systems) come down, Microsoft's market keeps growing. The best way to keep prices coming down is for there to be serious competition with Intel.

What's really interesting is that IBM and Sun are now trying to do the same thing to Microsoft. Both companies have made various moves to release large numbers of software patents in to the puiblic domain, with the explicit purpose of boosting the quality of open-source software. For IBM and Sun, the main concern is helping Linux's continuing takeover of the server market. As the cost of hardware comes down, software prices (especially for Windows) have gone up both in relative and absolute terms. Bringing the costs of the software down is an important factor for IBM to continue expanding its servers.

So Microsoft uses AMD, IBM uses the OS community, and in the crossfire we've gotten the reality of computers costing less than $500, but far more powerful than anything possible even five years ago. Now, if the Linuxers can just get a good desktop OS going...