An ill wind is blowing near Microsoft right now. It's come and passed before, but this time seems different. I'm starting to get a lot of clients asking about this "Linux stuff." And I'm not even talking about the corporations trying to save money on software; I'm talking about individuals trying to save their home computers.

To begin with, I'm not alone in having my doubts about the "upcoming patch" that Microsoft has promised on the tenth of January. It's simply not going to be all it needs to be (even if it does appear on time).

Now in all honesty, there should be no problem patching this specific issue. After all, Microsoft needs only to read the MSIs that are being distributed to get a pretty good idea of what to do. Still, I have a feeling that they won't really be fixing this. It's just not a good sign when Microsoft is starting to make money fixing its own software.

Besides that, what about all the versions of Windows that are no longer supported? There are still plenty of people using those. Even if this one issue is patched for all versions, it's presuming everyone is updating in the first place. I'm not so much worried about Joe Average losing his Web surfing/gaming/porn/email box but rather the damage those boxes will cause professionals in terms of Spam and DDoS attacks in coming months.

If they want a chance in the future, they'd better fundamentally change the Windows architecture in Vista. It's no longer a matter of "Windows is lame!" and "Linux is teh 1337!" shouts from the Linux fanboys. Instead, they are facing down the fact that malware is beginning to make their software unsafe for the average user to even consider exclusively. It won't matter how easy Vista is to use once it gets to the point that your system is broken as soon as it connects to the Net.

The trend is starting to look like there won't be a way for Windows to stay ahead of (or at least a few yards behind) the malware writers. There are just too many of them out there. With closed source, there is no way to have as many bright people working on secure code as there are equally bright criminals wanting to break it.

Why is that? It's a simple matter of economics that can't be circumvented - no matter how much money Microsoft has, it can't pay enough to talented coders to compete with the money available to malicious coders. This is a fundamental fact that all closed source software vendors had better consider.

Don't like using open source software? The way things are going, you may not have a choice in a few years. Sloppy coding, slow updates, malware, and ignoring more than 30 years of best practices in software architecture will run traditional software consumers out of the closed source market and the traditional vendors out of town as a result.

I suppose that would be a rather ironic end to all the Microsofts out there. They love capitalism when it works in their favor, but it's the capitalist principals of competition and a free market that will make open source shine and could destroy the old guard of software vendors.

As a matter of fact, it gets even more ironic than that for Microsoft. They designed Internet Explorer as an embedded part of their operating system in an effort to monopolize the Web. Now, that monopoly is slowly choking the life out of the software it was meant to promote.

Someone had better wake up Bill and the boys at Redmond. All that "Linux stuff" is going to look a lot less geeky when it's the only damned thing left running.