[Golden Eagle]

Open Solaris could benefit, but the biggest beneficiaries I see if Linux stumbles are the BSD people.

BSD just doesn't have any significant commercial offerings except Apple, which requires a purchase of the Apple hardware and therefore significantly hampers distribution. OpenSolaris is already seeing a heightened interest since the GPL controversy erupted, there was a story just a couple of weeks ago that Google is considering if not preparing to switch to OpenSolaris from Linux, which would be the conversion of the largest Linux user in the world.

[DesScorp]

Ummm, BSD runs on pretty much anything. It's already used in a lot of embedded products. Our office copier's software uses NetBSD as the base OS.

If Linux's mindshare takes a hit, its BSD that will benefit most, again, because of it's very very liberal license.