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It's not who you may think. Consider the combined technologies of the two companies, and you may conclude Microsoft is marked for death.

Many years ago, after Marc Andreessen left the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Mosaic browser became Netscape, some thought the debut of the browser meant the end of Windows.

The underlying operating system would become irrelevant; Netscape would run on top of whatever might be available, and users would work on spreadsheets hosted by application service providers.

Microsoft didn't quite go away. It gave away Internet Explorer for free; Netscape made several missteps, and suddenly IE was the most widely used browser.

IE became tightly integrated into Windows, Microsoft narrowly avoided a disastrous breakup judgment in a court battle over browser integration and that was the end of Netscape.

That was four years ago. Linux has become more polished, particularly on the desktop side. The operating system supports PDF readers and Flash technology.

What if a user could launch a Flash-based version of freely available OpenOffice on a Linux desktop, also having a nominal cost, and produce PDF output all day?

What if several Fortune 500 companies thought that, particularly the cost savings, was a good idea?

It won't happen in the current business climate, and definitely not in the wake of the Microsoft - SAP partnership linking their respective products together. But for folks like Richard Stallman, isn't it nice to dream?

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.