Re: MS FUD

[Michael Fratoni <mfratoni tuxfan homeip net>]

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On Wednesday 01 May 2002 09:18 pm, G. T. Francisco, III wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 30, 2002 at 11:44:18PM -0400, Michael Fratoni said:
> > Q. Why should a donor include the operating system with their PC
> > donation?
> >
> > A. It is a legal requirement that pre-installed operating systems
> > remain with a machine for the life of the machine. If a company or
> > individual donates a machine to your school, it must be donated with
> > the operating system that was installed on the PC.
> >
> > Must be true, Microsoft says so. :)
>
> Microsoft FUD as usual.
>
> -- Wish they'd show this to the judge at the trial. Really smacks of
> illegal use of a monopoly.

Well, we can assume the judge knows about it. There was a Tunny act 
submission made to the Department of Justice detailing the problems with 
this behaviour. It's a pretty good read, actually.

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/public/25/mtc-00024074.htm

> -- Now the BSA can even audit any name brand PC (Dell, Gateway, etc.)
>    for having Linux and claim it is a violation!

Worse than that, MS has been doing software audits on some school 
districts.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/10193037769515227.xml

Oddly enough, and I quote the above article:

R. Thor Prichard, the executive director at the Oregon Educational 
Technology Consortium, observed, "Microsoft has made it known they're 
concerned about Linux invading their territory. They're doing a lot of 
strategy building about eliminating Linux as a threat. Some of the 
districts they targeted are some of the districts doing initiatives in 
Linux." 

Well worth the read.

- -- 
- -Michael

pgp key:  http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/gpgkey.txt
Red Hat Linux 7.2 in 8M of RAM: http://www.rule-project.org/
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