-posted as "anonymous by Paul Murphy (winface.com)

Nice comment, but wrong on all counts.

First: Gartner's advisory is just legal cover. They're not saying 'stop Linux deployment;" they are saying "make sure you understand the potential legal issues before proceeding."

Second: Netcraft's measurement tools are after the fact, Gartner's advisory is well before the fact. lets wait six months and then look at what happened a month or two after Gartner's comment.

I assume little or nothing will change, but saying that deployments in July reflect an intentional non-response to a July advisory assumes that companies could have known in April or March (when the deployment decisions were made) what Gartner would say in July.

Third: the issue behind the advisory isn't SCO or Linux. It's IBM vs. SCOsource; more precisely it's IBM's decision to try to stall SCOsource by stalling the case in/on discovery rather than proceeding to court that's causing the FUD in the minds of executives facing Linux choices.

In the end it's IBM's position that will hurt Linux, not because the infractions (assuming, as I do, that they exist) will directly affect Linux outside the Z/I/P series boxes, but because they are creating a huge market for lawyers in attacking or defending open source products. That's very bad news because it differentially limits open source in the US without affecting it in Europe and Asia - potentially condemning the US to "also ran" status in Linux adoption.