Kill Microsoft and you don't need to virtualize

Yeah, sometimes, I lose my tempers at Microsoft. But I'm not the only one. Today a colleague told me that the day Microsoft was removed, we would not need virtualization anymore.

:-?

"Yeah. Of course!
Look, why do we virtualize? To reduce the costs of having so many machines and reinstalling them.
Why do we have so many machines? Because they are different, we can do different things on each of them. Yet, we need to do a little of each of these things.
Why are they so different? Because one player: Microsoft, doesn't play the game of compatibility, but plays the game of anti-compatibility."

"So, take the problem in reverse order", he said
"If Microsoft disappears, almost only Unix-like players remain. They can homogeneize their differences very quickly. If they don't, small layers of compatibility can be added quickly, because the root differences are small.
If we can do very similar things on these different systems, we will choose those we need for the things we need. We will not be forced to have all of them.
Then we can have fewer machines. Regroup small tasks on a single computer. Without virtual machines! No need neither to buy a specific system nor to run a virtual machine in order to implement a specific software.
Goodbye VMWare, goodbye Java, goodbye wine!"

That's, of course, very optimistic. But it's nice to hear someone optimistic these times. When I come to think of it... remove SQL Server incompatibilities, and you can run almost any application choosing the database you will use! And with the broad (in average) compatibility of C and C++ software, you can use the same software whatever the OS... That's what I call saving money.
Sounds promising. When do we start?