The thing that will give them the time to effect this change is their ability to keep the API secret. The biggest punishment the government could give Microsoft is to make them publish the API and keep publishing it. Without the API to give them some time, Microsoft will sink from its own weight within two years. That's all it will take for the Linux crew to develop the API hooks for any application and the herd instinct will do the rest. Windows was always a kludge, and will always be a kludge.
Users are tired of kludges messing up their lives.
As soon as we have a valid choice, we will switch and flush. That sentence is his exact words, not a quote from an analyst. Mafiaboy is a suspect, and is being charged with the DoS attacks, but at this point is no more guilty of the crime than Mr. Fonseca himself. He whines that you just get two good songs on a CD and asks why you should have to pay for 10. It's all in how you look at it.