On Jan 15, 5:15 pm, "[H]omer" <s...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Verily I say unto thee, that ness...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx spake thusly:
> > <Quote>
> [...]
> > Opera is asking the European Commission to obligate Microsoft to
> > unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative
> > browsers pre-installed on computers....
> > </Quote>
> >http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2008/tc20080114_194...
> What /everyone/ should be asking is for *Windows* itself to be unbundled
> from OEM systems:
I put a similar comment into the feedback section.
The real issue is not what Microsoft does or not bundle, it's the fact
that they have exclusive control of the OEM distribution channel.
This is what the EU needs to address. If the contracts with the OEMs
include clauses that prevent an OEM from installing Linux, desktop
virtualization, competing browsers, media players, and other competing
software, then this is an illegal contract.
The second issue is whether the OEMs are willing partners in this
exclusionary marketplace, and are therefore guilty of collusion. In
this case, the OEMs who participate in these contracts in which
competitors are excluded from the market as preinstalled projects
should be codefendents, and should be made to make restitution
(mandatory inclusion of all competitive projects that want access to
the OEM preinstalled software distribution channel.
The other possibility is that the OEMs are NOT willing participants in
this exclusionary behavior because Microsoft has threatened actions
which would have dire economic consequences, in which case Microsoft
should be charged with extortion, and forced to remove all
exclusionary clauses which are used to force OEMs to exclude
competitors in their packaging (including preinstalled software),
promotion (including advertizing, packaging, and features lists).
In either case, Microsoft would have gained profits as a result of
illegal activities which would make them guilty of Racketeering. As a
result, the OEM channel could be regulated by the agencies that
regulate trade.
Microsoft's contracts with OEMs (with the exception of actual pricing)
would be public information, because the contracts would have to be
submitted to the regulatory agency, reviewed, and approved.
Furthermore, if an OEM attempted to use a clause in the contract as a
basis for excluding a competitor willing to offer a competitive
product at a competitive price, the excluded competitor could demand
that the clause be removed to prevent the exclusion of competitors in
this market.
Microsoft established it's monopoly of the PC Operating System market
back when PCs only had floppy disks, or only had 5 megabyte drives.
There wasn't room for competing products on the hard drive. Today,
the average PC has over 120 Gigabytes of storage, and the average
application is typically around 50 megabytes. The nature of the
market means that there is no longer technical justification for
excluding competitors.
Simply put, the OEM distribution channel must either be open and
competitive, or it needs to disappear. Each OEM has to decide whether
to include no preinstalled software, or to include any competitive
software, which may include Microsoft's products, but could also
include any other products, libraries, or utilities that a competitor
is willing to offer, including FOSS.
This would also provide the OEM with ways to differentiate their
products by offering standard software, but also being able to offer
additional value in terms of preinstalled software.
This might even be a good opportunity for the Linux distributors to
establish a common "base" (Linux Standard Base) which could be
installed by OEMs, that could be used by all Linux distributions,
without having to do a full install, this might become a good basis
for at least having the ability to boot Linux or Windows. It would
also be a good basis for making sure that both Windows and Linux could
be used as virtual clients using desktop virtualization.
> http://www.globalisation.eu/publications/unbundlingmicrosoftwindows.pdf
> That would be the /most/ benefit to competition.
The ideal would be to have "core" Windows and Linux partitions of
around 4 GB, which could be used to generate either native mode, or
virtual machine installations. In addition, there should be a core
virtualization "host", probably based on a core LSB system, that can
be use as a "host" for both Windows and Linux. The OEMs can then
create basic partitions for each operating system installed, using no
more than 30% of the disk for both systems. This would leave the
remaining 60% for a user created partition, which could be NTFS or
EXT3.
Even better, Microsoft should just be forced to adopt a published
standard file system format, so that both Linux and Windows could be
installed on the same filesystem without conflict.
> K.http://slated.org
> | "[Microsoft] are willing to lose money for years and years just to
> | make sure that you don't make any money, either." - Bob Cringely.
> | -http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/cringely-the-un.html
The whole point is that Microsoft DOESN'T lose money. "Giving away" a
browser or media player assures them of a minumum of $30 per PC on 100
million PCs per year. In addition, there is the potential to pick up
an additional $50-$200 per PC for Office and other "premium".
> Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
> 22:15:26 up 25 days, 19:51, 2 users, load average: 0.05, 0.05, 0.00
Excellent, almost a month without a reboot on a desktop.
You seem to have more than enough CPU left over for Windows on VM if
you really wanted it.
Rex
|
|
