Martin Taylor's appearance at LinuxWorld is something akin to a Texas cattle rancher grilling up juicy steaks at a PETA rally. A Linux love fest just doesn't seem like the kind of place you'd expect to find Microsoft's designated Linux slayer. But there he was, giving interviews about how Microsoft will show the world that Windows deserves to keep its operating system crown. Admirably, Taylor doesn't plan to use anecdotes or a smear campaign to prove his point. He's made it clear this war will be won or lost in the lab.

Taylor wants head-to-head competition between Windows and the open-source "stack." That means Windows vs. Linux, Windows vs. Apache, Windows vs. any open-source challenger in a fact-based measurement of features and ownership costs. In its Enterprise Engineering Center, Microsoft is taking Linux and other open-source systems apart, piece by piece, to see what they're made of. That should give Redmond a pretty good idea what it's up against, but independent research is the only credible way for users to know for sure whose OS software is cheaper, more secure and easier to use.