Why? Because, first, many people do indeed see it as a war where there has to be a winner and a loser, and second, when I talk with people who never have seen Linux, or with people who'd never seriously consider switching to Linux (in business or for their home needs), most of them talk about not having tried it yet or it not being ripe yet. So the general expectation is that they'll only stick with (expensive, buggy, hated, ...) Microsoft software until they feel confident about switching. So the task is not to convince them that they should try Linux, but that they might want to try it now. Or at least that they might want to try Oo.org, the Mozilla family of programs, the Gimp etc. on Windows, so that they have an easy time when it's time to change the chassis underneath (is there a Windows port of Digikam?)

But I don't think PJ is right when she sais that “FOSS can't survive in an IP regime such as Ballmer has laid before our eyes.”. We've all seen how successful the sue your own customers business model is. At this time, I think it's safe to say that most big Linux users are also big Microsoft customers because Linux in the enterprise still means primarily Linux on the Server, Windows on the Desktop, so going after the big Linux users will be exactly that. Going after the small Linux users is just not interesting. Going after hobbyist FOSS developers will not work because only using patented works commercially actually violates the patent, as far as I understand patent law. Going against the commercial Linux developers will work to some degree, so let's look at this closer: Software patents are strongest in the U.S., so in Europe it will be much harder for MS for one thing. And, Novell and Red Hat excluded (and IBM, who should be big enough to take on MS, especially since their lawyers by now have had extensive training in what Linux is abaut), the commercial Linux space is still dominated by small companies, so MS would have to overload the judges with thousands of small lawsuits all over the world, and since no two companies do exactly the same thing I doubt the lawsuit templating technique adapted by the RIAA for music downloads will work. And, finally, the nice thing about Open Source Software (using this term here on purpose): it's out in the open. So kill one company, its former employees will found three new ones because the former customers (even if they're scared and would like to get rid of their Free Software) will still need support because they can't all switch (back) to MS based environments immediately. And I haven't even talked about public opinion and what antitrust offices might have to say, because those are extremely hard to predict and their effects are uncertain.

(After having seen OpenXchange's SyncML code fail horribly on dates that are beyond 2038, which is something you quickly arrive at if people enter birthdays as repeating appointments until infinity.)

Update: Neil Williams has some related information.