US News and World Report covers Red Hat's IPO filing . For most of the 1990s, competing head-on against Microsoft was a singularly stupid thing to do. It wasn't just hard for them to find venture capital financing. It was practically impossible. Now comes Red Hat, a tiny company out of North Carolina with the temerity to put Microsoft and its Windows operating system smack in its cross hairs.
Week looks at Linux-related IPO's .
Whatever the reasons, one thing is clear. Linux isn't just getting into big business. Linux is becoming big business. The bottom line is that Linux does not have the interface consistency to make it appealing to end users and it uses a software philosophy that makes it a very poor choice for developers. If Linux truly were a good choice for everyone, it would have been popular a long time ago.