____/ [H]omer on Monday 02 July 2007 16:25 : \____
> Verily I say unto thee, that Mark Kent spake thusly:
>> [H]omer <spam@xxxxxxx> espoused:
>
>>> Of course some companies start with loss leaders to kill the
>>> competition, with the intention of making up losses at a later
>>> stage. Such commodities may be "bargains" for the consumer, but
>>> think about the ethics of the company you're supporting by buying
>>> such products. IMHO such tactics are immoral.
>>
>> It's about the network effect, though.
>
> I understand the motive, I just intensely disagree with the method.
> Selling at a deliberate loss is equivocal to lying; it's deceptive and
> underhand. If your product can't sell on it's own merit, then it doesn't
> deserve to sell at all, all else being equal (i.e. assuming your
> competition isn't doing the same thing to you). If your competition *is*
> playing the same game, then all parties should be forced to disengage in
> such unethical practices, by legislation.
>
> Think of it like this: It's like the difference between a boxing match
> and a street brawl. How low will corporate ethics be allowed to slip
> before someone steps in and puts and end to it?
>
>> So seeding markets with goods or services is a really useful thing to
>> do
>
> Certainly, much like spreading unsubstantiated libel about patents, in
> order to discourage customers from buying the competition's products, or
> launching bogus "Get the Facts" campaigns of misinformation, or paying
> shills to poison the Web with malignant anti-FOSS rhetoric.
>
> Yes, I'm quite sure those things are extremely helpful, to evil
> corporations like Microsoft.
>
>> Linux has grown in much the same way though
>
> Ostensibly, Linux is cheaper (and for many other reasons more viral in
> terms of adoption), but it's no loss leader, nor are any of the parties
> involved deliberately sabotaging the competition (AFAIK). Oracle comes
> to mind as a possible exception, and of course the idiotic people who
> signed up for Microsoft's patent protection racket, but in the main FOSS
> based enterprise is ethical, as much as any corporate activity can be
> said to be.
>
>> with initially the only real entry barrier being technical rather
>> than cost; this translates for most people into a time penalty (you
>> have to install it yourself, or at least, you had to), which has a
>> cost economists call the "opportunity cost", since you could have
>> been doing something else at that time. However, the lack of other
>> costs, licensing, upgrade cycles, downtime, viruses, exploits and so
>> on has resulted in linux being adopted by more and more technical
>> people. This created some of the network effect, and linux adoption
>> is, as per the normal network effect, growing at some exponential
>> rate since most people know several others, so each adopter can
>> influence eg., 2 other people.
>
> IMHO the primary contributor to the FOSS/Linux network effect is the
> GPL. Seeking permission to access APIs, obtaining closed licenses,
> signing NDAs, joining exclusive "partner" schemes, and paying
> extortionate fees for royalties, seems to be the biggest inhibitor to
> adoption, amongst developers at least. This directly affects precisely
> *what* is available to consumers, for how long, under what conditions,
> and at what cost. Take away those restrictions, and you immediately give
> both developers *and* consumers more freedom, and ultimately more choice.
>
> The problem is that the present environment is slanted in favour of
> those who have been allowed to abuse the system to obtain exclusive
> "rights" to ideas and implementations, and to those who have huge
> marketing capital to spread hype (read: lies) about their products.
> It is an unfortunate fact that consumers are gullible and will believe
> nearly anything advertisers tell them, if it's repeated often enough.
>
> This is one of the reasons I support efforts to bring more mainstream
> FOSS/Linux advertising to bear on the market, targeted primarily at
> consumers, rather than businesses (who's demands are consumer driven).
> The current imbalance in the marketplace must be redressed.
>
>>> Rarely is the price of a commodity a true reflection of it's
>>> inherent value, and Microsoft products are surely the most typical
>>> example of this, since IMHO they are worth zero ... less than that,
>>> in fact, since Microsoft would have to pay *me* to use them ...
>>> and I'd still refuse.
>>>
>>
>> This is the nub of the issue... to you, Windows is worthless, so you
>> pay nowt (good choice imho :-), whereas Linux is useful to you, so
>> you are prepared to pay something. In fact, I've been purchasing
>> Linux-based goods for a long time now
>
> In the past, it wasn't uncommon for me to spend thousands on proprietary
> *nix software for both private and business use. In some cases the FOSS
> equivalents just weren't there, or were unacceptably poor, or lacked the
> proper support infrastructure (clients require guarantees and, in some
> cases, underwritten insurance). That was (seemingly) a long time ago.
> These days there is nothing (that I can think of) that cannot be done
> purely with FOSS tools (outside the communications industry). Things
> have improved immeasurably in the last few years, both in the kernel and
> elsewhere, and there is now no excuse for anyone to not be using FOSS
> exclusively, either at home, or in the front or back office.
>
>> I would never buy another Microsoft operating system unless they were
>> to go open-source with the GPL or a GPL compatible licence.
>
> The license is only a tiny part of the problem. Their software is simply
> unacceptably poor, and their business practises are blatantly criminal.
> If Microsoft were to completely rewrite Windows from scratch, from a BSD
> codebase (like Apple), and give it away for free, I'd still tell them to
> shove it. I don't do business with gangsters.
Argh!!! Moment ago, the shills buried my perfectly legitmate submission.
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Linus_Torvalds_Microsoft_Just_Made_Up_The_Number
This comes just days after an FSF item was wiped out of this earth <
http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archives/2007/06/30/fsf-censored-digg/ >. What
is going on in the world?!?!?! Is it like the Truman Show?
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | "These characters were randomly picked"
http://Schestowitz.com | Open Prospects | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Tasks: 109 total, 1 running, 107 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
http://iuron.com - knowledge engine, not a search engine
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