Why would M$ fear the Linuxes less than it fears the BSDs? That doesn't seem to make sense to me. I also doubt that the dissing comes from M$ flagwavers sewing the seeds of sedition and dissent in the Unix ranks. I'd attribute it to internecine rivalry derived from ignorance and malice.
It would seem that the Linuxes are much more commercially oriented. Look at Corel, Caldera, RedHat, SuSE, and all the rest of them. Sure, BSDs are more used by ISP businesses and other high-tech places filled with Unix professionals, but that's really a completely new place for M$, once where they've not traditionally been very effective (maybe there's not enough room temperature IQs there for them to hoodwink so easily:-). But because the Linuxes are obviously trying to attack M$'s existing business at least in mindshare if not in real dollar amounts (but I bet there's something there, too), I would think that the Linuxes would be much more threatening to M$ than the BSDs.
Linuxes are threatening MS's existing customers (Score:2)
It would seem that the Linuxes are much more commercially oriented. Look at Corel, Caldera, RedHat, SuSE, and all the rest of them. Sure, BSDs are more used by ISP businesses and other high-tech places filled with Unix professionals, but that's really a completely new place for M$, once where they've not traditionally been very effective (maybe there's not enough room temperature IQs there for them to hoodwink so easily :-). But because the Linuxes are obviously trying to attack M$'s existing business at least in mindshare if not in real dollar amounts (but I bet there's something there, too), I would think that the Linuxes would be much more threatening to M$ than the BSDs.