Microsoft vs. Open Source: Who Will Win?

I just read a very interesting Q&A  with Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pankaj Ghemawat related to a research the two of them conducted on the battle between Microsoft and OSS. The Q&A is published on the Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge for Business Leaders web site.

I personally think the approach of the study conducted by the two of them is perhaps one of the best I've encountered so far. Of course, the work has been performed in the pre-Vista, pre-Office 2007 and pre-.NET Framework 3.0 age, so one can argue the situation has changed today.

However, the conclusion of their work is one that I totally agree with: if both Microsoft's Windows and Linux do their homework right, they will remain in the market for a long time.

One thing's sure: Microsoft did get the homework right with Windows Vista.