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[News] Microsoft Tax on Everything -- Truth, Not Fiction

The Microsoft Tax revisited

,----[ Quote ]
| Rudyard Kipling retained the services of six honest serving men who
| taught him all he knew (What and Why, When and How and Where and Who).
| By contrast the Bobsey twins at Microsoft, Steve and Bill, were so clever 
| that they managed to downsize these faithful old retainers--and
| renamed them while they were at it. Now they are just two: ignorance
| and inertia. With these, they mused, we will conqueror the world. A
| depressingly near monopolistic market share seems to prove them right;
| and why not? After all, to paraphrase Hillare Belloc: they have the
| Microsoft Tax and we do not.
| 
| They have the Microsoft Tax and we do not
|
| [...]
|
| In conclusion, refunds have been thin on the ground but they have acted as 
| a catalyst for looking at the convoluted nature of EULAS, OEM licences and 
| sundry evils. When I started using and promoting GNU/Linux, I thought, in 
| my naive innocence, that I had it all down pat. How little I knew! I was, 
| in fact, mired in a bog of ignorance. However, if you?re not going to build 
| you own PC/laptop and you?ve done six impossible things before breakfast at 
| Milliways restaurant why not round it all off with an demand for a 
| Microsoft Tax refund. Good luck.
`----

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/the_microsoft_tax_revisited


Related:

Microsoft has performed an illegal function and should be shut down.

,----[ Quote ]
| Free PC manufacturers from Microsoft's grip. Microsoft has used its
| monopoly power to bully original equipment manufacturers into installing
| only Windows on computers. A court-ordered remedy of nondiscriminatory
| OEM licensing of Windows would go a long way toward solving this
| problem. Pricing and licensing should be "transparent," openly
| published, and evenhandedly applied.
| 
| Don't let Microsoft use its other software monopolies to limit
| competition. Just as Microsoft used its Windows monopoly to
| threaten the competition, so it is using its Office franchise
| to scare off competitors and dominate new Internet markets.
| Its preferred strategy is the notorious "embrace, extend,
| and extinguish" gambit...
`----

http://web.archive.org/web/20041009195732/http%3A//www.sfbg.com/nader/100.html


Microsoft's Dirty OEM-Secret

,----[ Quote ]
| They are, in short the secret to Microsoft's success. And the word
| secret is to be taken quite literally: No OEM may talk about the
| contents of his contract, or he will lose his license, and (assumption)
| likely be sued for breach of contract as well.
`----

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/23/13219/110


Microsoft 'killed Dell Linux' - States

,----[ Quote ]
| The States' remedy hearing opened in DC yesterday, and States attorney
| Steven Kuney produced a devastating memo from Kempin, then in charge of
| Microsoft's OEM business, written after Judge Jackson had ordered his
| break-up of the company. Kempin raises the possibility of threatening
| Dell and other PC builders which promote Linux.
|
| "I'm thinking of hitting the OEMs harder than in the past with anti-Linux.
| ... they should do a delicate dance," Kempin wrote to Ballmer, in what is
| sure to be a memorable addition to the phrases ("knife the baby", "cut off
| the air supply") with which Microsoft enriched the English language in the
| first trial. Unlike those two, this is not contested.
|
| [...]
|
| Earlier memos described that it was "untenable" that a key Microsoft
| partner was promoting Linux. Kuney revealed that Dell disbanded its Linux
| business unit in early 2001. Dell quietly pulled Linux from its desktop PCs
| in the summer of 2001, IDG's Ashlee Vance discovered subsequently, six
| months after we heard Michael Dell declare his love of Linux on the desktop
| the previous winter.
|
| Compaq was also mentioned in other memos, with Microsoft taking the line
| that OEMs should "meet demand but not help create demand" for Linux.
`----

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/19/microsoft_killed_dell_linux_states/


Jury Hears Microsoft Competition Suit

,----[ Quote ]
| A judge on Friday told jurors they must accept as fact that a
| federal court found in 1999 that Microsoft holds a monopoly over
| computer operating systems and that it restricted computer
| manufacturers' ability to use competing systems.
|
| [...]
|
| She said she'll show that the company used its monopoly power
| to exclude competition and control prices and that it conspired with
| other companies to restrain trade, maintaining what she called a
| chokehold on software competitors and computer manufacturers.
`----

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061201/microsoft_trial.html?.v=1

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