Re: And this is news? @Kebabbert
"...As for the conspirationist theories..."
It is a fact that these large companies simultaneously, all together, bet on immature Linux with a bad license, instead of mature FreeBSD with a more suitable license. It is a fact that large companies together have bet on one company or technology instead of something superior. There are no theories involved here.
It is also a fact that only a few companies control the global economy - there is much research and PhD dissertations on this. These companies are typically Wall Street investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, etc, and they all cooperate tightly - no theories involved here, there are lot of credible research on this, just read the research papers in my link. If these companies decide to bet on something, for instance shorting more silver than is annually produced, then silver prices will plummet (this has happened, and if you work in finance you know this). Or if they decide to go long on a company, stock prices will rise. These are facts.
Here comes the only theory in my post, again: "It is my theory, that if these companies bet heavily on Linux, then Linux will take off. So, it might happen that Oracle and IBM and MS and HP and everyone else will bet heavily on Linux and start to buy and sell Linux". This is the only theory in my post. And I agree that it might be considered as a "conspiracy theory". The rest of the contents in my post are facts. Just read the research papers if you think it is a bit far fetched. I will recap here, what conclusion one PhD dissertation arrived at in my link:
-The researcher used mathematical models to analyze lot of financial databases containing lot of information. In particular, he analyzed which company owned a stake in another company, and which company owned another company which owned another company, etc. And he kept track of all this, across millions of companies. And it turned out that always, only a few companies owned a company, which owned another company, etc. It turned out that 50ish companies where the spider in the net, they controlled every other company. And these 47 companies where typically wall street investment banks: Goldman Sachs, Barclays, JP Morgan, etc. Just read the new and ground breaking research in my link. It is very interesting when researchers use mathematical models in other areas, such as in economics. No human can do this, but math and computers can. And we can observe things that has not been possible earlier.