Microsoft has their opinion, and they're welcome to it.

Linux offers a lot: flexibility, vendor independence and over 30 years of POSIX compliant OS development. There are those who feel that these advantages are worth the additional effort. For the remaining users, there's always Windows.

Why do people regurgitate marketing as news?

"Once the traditional anti-open source poster child, Microsoft is slowly seeing this aura eroding replaced as a direct consequence of the rise of new, more pressing, rivals such as Google and Apple."

Who use OSS because it enables them to compete without MS controlling them with the monopolistic abuses it was CONVICTED of employing in the past.

" the Redmond company, once the epitome of the proprietary software business model"

You mean competing by 'cutting off the air supply' (Netscape), stealing code (Stac), stacking standards organisations, claiming security certs it had no right to (C2), producing buggy, unstable and insecure software, lying to Federal courts, etc, etc, instead of competing on the quality of it's offerings?

"Today our customers know Linux isn't free"

It is. It is free to acquire. You are free to modify it. You are free to use it. It frees you from software-provider-dictated 'churn' - using it frees you from the hardware upgrade treadmill. You are free to dictate your own release cycles, free from the BSA, and free from interface changes that force regular retraining, if you choose.

About the only thing that isn't free are support contracts - and you don't get free support from Microsoft, either.

"And we're really getting the message out about the fraudulent perception of free in the marketplace as it relates to open source"

Fraudulent? Fraudulent is more along the lines of: "Today our customers know Linux isn't free"

Ask a FOSS-based company, or any developer of FOSS - It's about freedom to use & modify software. The reason that MS wants to keep the focus on 'free' as in dollars is because they simply cannot compete in a market they don't control. MS cannot control FOSS, no matter how much they spend. This means they have to change the way they compete. They must compete on quality - and that costs them more money than it does if they used FOSS. Their advantage is slipping away; the market as adapted around the damage that they've done.

"the Microsoft CEO pointed out that Microsoft's focus is shifting away from keeping open source down"

Again, since MS cannot match the resources available to FOSS (except in short, costly bursts, perhaps) they must use their monopoly status, legal resources, and various pawns (SCO, for example) to try and hurt their competition, as opposed to producing quality products to eclipse them.

"Nobody talks as much today about the risks in our business that come from Linux and open source."

And this would be because business today has had it proved to them that FOSS is only a bogeyman to software vendors that depend on control, as opposed to quality, to drive sales.

This is not an article. This was simply MS Execs trying to convince themselves that everything is sunny in Redmond, and that it will be forever.

Microsoft Wins!
Who better to say so than Microsoft themselves?
I am winning because I say so, and I'm not as afraid of the enemy as I used to be. Good logic. Oh, wait... Didn't Saddam try that one also?

They must be getting worried, sliding nasty words like "fraudulent" and "risks" into their Hitleresque, spin-scripted press releases. Ironically, they direct all of these nasty remarks as much at their buddy – Novell – as at any other Linux vendor. Nice business relationship.

Of course, all of these remarks could be easily countered in kind from the open-source viewpoint with similar-sounding statements like:
..
"today...people worry about the COST, SECURITY RISKS and loss of freedom of being locked into a single-vendor software system like Microsoft” .
..
“we're really getting the message out about the FRAUDULENT perception of VALUE in the marketplace as it relates to paying though the nose for Microsoft software and services. Customer needs are better and more securely met with great selection of open source software from many enterprise-class vendors, at tiny fraction of the cost of Microsoft's offerings”.
..
“The way we compete against Windows and other Microsoft software is very simple: we build a much better variety of products that are more secure, more efficient, and AUDITABLE. With open-source you actually KNOW what your are running, unlike security-problem-prone black-box solutions from Microsoft. Why would anyone trust their company's valuable data to a company which will not tell you what you are loading onto your machines?”
..
“The economic downturn has a lot of people tightening their belts. We say: don't cut your workforce of talented people just to maintain a swollen IT budget. Keep your smart people, and run smart software; use open-source solutions to give your company the competitive advantage”.

The market clearly agrees with Microsoft's "victory" over open source. The MSFT price is down -10.95% over the last 52 weeks. In fact, the MSFT stock price is almost exactly where it was 5 years ago, with only a miserable dividend payout.

By comparison, Red Hat stock price is up 2.84% over the last 52 weeks and no less than 292% over the past 5 years. Other companies with an interest in the open source story, like IBM are also doing better than Microsoft.

You can draw your own conclusions on the substance of Microsoft's claims. The market has a contrary view.

Given the problems Microsoft has in their key market segments of Windows, and to a lesser extent, Office, a $20 MSFT stock price in the next 24 months can't be ruled out. I see their major problems as:

1. The document file mess (.doc, docx, and ooxml) which is close to delivering .odt a victory.

2. Vista is not doing well, in spite of the rhetoric, and there no modern OS for the explosive growth of the subnotebook market. (XP and Office 2007 on an eee anyone?).

3. They now have a steadily declining share in the developed world, and the developing world is not embracing windows, at least not in any commercial sense. The comment from an Indian academic likening Microsoft to the British East India Company is a classic.

Linux being free is not only a myth, it is a fraudulent perception.

Linux is free and virtually gratis to obtain, free to modify and redistribute. Come in the Microsoft, non fraudulent, 'Get the FUD', oops, "Get The Facts", campaign, "exposing" the "myth."

Microsoft's anti OSS spin has become of Orwellian proportions, it is without bounds.