Marc Andreessen, co-founder and executive vice president of products at Netscape Communications Corp couldn’t resist commenting on reports that Microsoft Corp’s Windows was going to be used within the medical industry for devices such as heart monitors when he got up to speak at the Massachusetts Software Council last Friday, reports InfoWorld. The result, he said, would be a product that creates its own market [because] you have heart problems just thinking about it. At the same talk, Andreessen predicted that use of the Linux operating system would grow fast over the next few years and would consolidate the Unix market around itself, ultimately posing the most serious threat to Microsoft’s Windows NT. Linux uses the freeware model of giving away source code to developers, a strategy that Netscape recently emulated with its Communicator product line (CI No 3,380).
