During the Cold War, the initials ABM used to mean Anti-Ballistic Missile. In the late '90s, they stood for Anybody But Microsoft, a reaction to the fact that Bill Gates' Windows operating system was in 90 percent of the world's computers and critics didn't like the restrictions Microsoft Corp. placed on computer companies that licensed its software. But now Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, forced to ease up on those restrictions. The biggest beneficiaries of the New Millennium ABM Club may be proponents of Linux, the open-source operating system, long considered to be as potentially disruptive to Microsoft's dominance as a missile strike on Communist-era Moscow.
|