OStatic

I've seen a certain amount of gloating recently in the open source press about a memo from Bill Gates that the Seattle PI recently dug up. You know the one, probably: Bill tries to install some software from the net, and ends up flaming his people for a couple of pages with choice bits like The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. But so what?

Writing in today's Wall Street Journal, technology columnist Lee Gomes has a series of modest suggestions for Microsoft as they try to frame the course of Windows 7. These include such common-sense ideas as cutting down the number of SKUs and implementing Time Machine-like system recovery features. But one of his suggestions seems even more outlandish: that Windows should become some sort of crazy open source software.

One of the latest reports from Forrester, Enterprise Desktop and Web 2.0/SAAS Platform Trends, 2007 is starting to make its way around media outlets on the web. The Forrester folks tracked software trends in major categories across 50,000 users month-by-month, and now their conclusions are out. Depending on how you look at it, they're either good or bad for open source.