Jon "Maddog" Hall, executive director of Linux International, feels that the Linux operating system has a potential market of 5.5 billion people. Around 20 million users have been reached so far.

"My view is that all those people who have never been exposed to any operating system, including Windows, are the potential market for Linux," he said in an exclusive interview with The Financial Express.

The white-locked leader of Linux, who has earned "Maddog" as his middle name, was in the Capital to address IT World'99/Comdex. He hopes to use this opportunity to gauge the popularity of Linux in India.

In his well-attended speech, Hall emphasised the freedom which Linux offers as opposed to Windows. "Linux is free as against Windows from Microsoft which costs a lot. Also, you can innovate with Linux," said Hal.

The main message that Hal wants to convey is that the entire world does not belong to Microsoft. "Not even the entire computing world is Microsoft's," he added.

Discussing the recent anti-trust litigations against Microsoft, Hal said, "I feel that Microsoft did monopolise. It uses its monopoly in the operating systems area to monopolise other areas such as internet. Now what Bill Gates has to prove is that the monopoly was not harmful. It has already been proved that Microsoft did monoploise," he said.

Linux International encourages users to form groups. It wants its users in India to band together to discuss their problems. Also, it wants users to distribute the Linux system to others. Linux users can access the website www.ssc.com, then press Linux Resources, and go to Groups of Linux Users Everywhere to get to other Linux users.

A principal area of users for Linux is IT students as the system comes for free. "Linux can be used with a primitive PC. It is free. What else do students want?" said Hal. Hal intends to interact with a number of Linux users while in India.