Microsoft Corp. Chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates on Tuesday weighed in on the threat the Linux operating system poses to his company's business, saying he is taking the threat seriously as Linux is "out there and very pervasive." Addressing more than 600 of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) from around the globe at the Redmond, Wash., campus, Gates said that during other points in Microsoft's history there had been technologies that people said were going to kill the company. "OS/2 for about six years was that. And it wasn't a joke; it was all of IBM that was 10 times the size of Microsoft putting all their energy, their leverage on ISVs, bundling it with their systems, everything they could do to beat Windows, and we as a company had to learn new things, do new things to respond to that competition," he said.
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