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Linux: 750 millions d'usagers dans 5 ans?

Voici un article publié par Businessweek à la fin d'avril.

"I Want to Live in a World Where Software Doesn't Stink" 

In a Q&A, Linux evangelist Eric Raymond talks about unseating Microsoft 
as the OS of choice 

(...)

Q: Five years from now, how many people will be using Linux?

A: If we continue to grow our user rate at the level we've been doing
now, [Raymond writes an arithmetic formula to determine this] we'd get
six doubling periods, which means just shy of a billion people, 860
million in fact. I'm not expecting it to be quite that high because trends
like this tend to show logistic growth rather than exponential, and it's not
clear what the threshold is. I'd say somewhere near 750 million would
be a good conservative estimate. 

Q: A conservative estimate? Isn't Microsoft still thriving on selling software?
How can Linux survive giving away its own?

Something must be made clear here. Microsoft is selling software, we're
selling service. Let me give you an exemple. While working at the prompt,
whereas Windows asks before overwriting a file, Linux just sends it 
to limbo. Though nowadays people rarely work at the prompt, on some 
occasions, they have to. After loosing a few files this way, they call 
support. We provide a little shell script and they're back to heaven.
Expect to see Linux prices skyrocketing in the next few years.

(...)

Bah, il dira ce qu'il voudra «l'évangélsite»,s'il y avait 750 millions 
d'usagers de Linux dans cinq ans, j'ai l'impression qu'il y en 
aurait toujours au moins 90% qui booteraient dans Windows 
par défaut. La fin de lilo n'est pas pour demain!

GP

Cf: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/apr1999/nf90427c.htm