Microsoft Losing Mindshare

After Microsoft won an open standard skirmish, the wind brings us Survey: Windows loses ground with developers:

...A survey this spring of more than 400 developers and IT managers in North America found that the number of developers targeting Windows for their applications declined 12 percent from a year ago. Just 64.8 percent targeted the platform as opposed to 74 percent in 2006.

"We attribute [the decline] largely to the increase in developers beginning to target Linux and different Linux [distributions]. Both Novell and Red Hat are the two dominant ones right now," said John Andrews, the CEO of Evans Data.

The arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse. "I think Vista probably offset some of the decline," Andrews said.

The share for Windows is expected to drop another 2 percent, to about 63 percent, in the next year, Andrews said.

The targeting of Linux by developers increased by 34 percent to 11.8 percent. It had been 8.8 a year ago, according to the survey. Linux targeting is expected to reach 16 percent over the next year.

Evans views the situation as a battle of Windows versus open source with open source maturing, Andrews said. Windows remains tops, though. "They're still dominant, there's no doubt about it," said Andrews. Use of Windows on the development desktop remains steady...

Maybe this is also because Microsoft switched to advertisers instead of 'developers' (see the video above).

Of course, I like the original 'Developers, Developers, Developers' remix:

Steve Ballmer - Developers, Developers, Developers Remix

Someone hand him his nitro.

At the end of the day, whoever has the most code wins. If Microsoft really thinks it can beat the entire global community, they need serious help.