Linus, the man who invented Linux (or its kernel anyway) talks about the deterioration of Microsoft in an interview in the Good Morning Silicon Valley blog.

Basically he says that Microsoft will not be replaced by another monopoly. Companies like Microsoft (and we have the equivalent here like Maltacom etc) begin to take themselves for granted.

He says "companies just don't tend to stay on top forever -- they become irrelevant either because of their own missteps or because their market just isn't the "happening thing" any more. You can only skate the cutting edge for so long.

So the question is how the decline happens, and in what timeframe. Will open source be a factor? Almost certainly. Will it be the factor? I don't know."

The clock's ticking, I say. More and more are realising that Microsoft is not the only way. It's not the only OS and not the only provider of a word processor in the world. Those of us who refuse to keep feeding the beast can switch to OpenOffice, an open source office suite.
Hopefully the government in Malta will wake up and smell the coffee rather than keep promoting just Microsoft. Let's promote open source too. Let's give students FREE copies of Linux and OpenOffice (not just copies of Office XP and Windows XP for Lm 10) so they can learn how to use advanced operating systems, not just click here and there like idiots who can't understand a thing about what they are trying to do.