OT: Two ways Microsoft sabotages Linux desktop adoption

[Temlakos]

Mike McCarty wrote:
> Jeff Vian wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, 2006-02-12 at 00:03 -0600, Christofer C. Bell wrote:
>>
> 
> [snip]
> 
>> It is a Microsoft problem as we see stated in the article, "Linux
>> evangelist John H. Terpstra told me: "Microsoft has used its market
>> dominance to coerce OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and
>> resellers not to sell competing products and services."  
> 
> 
> co.erce - v co.erced, co.erc.ing v.t. 1 To constrain by force,
> law, authority, or fear; compel 2 To bring into subjection or
> under control by superior force; repress 3 To bring about by
> coercion: to /coerce/ obedience - v.i. 4 To use coercive
> measures, as in government. See synonyms under COMPEL.
> 
> Please state what, exactly, is this "coerce" that MicroSoft has
> done.
> 
>> While all hardware vendors have the right to chose what/what not to
>> release in the areas of drivers and hardware, it is very difficult to
>> get an even playing field when the big boy uses coercion to tell the
>> vendor that if he does not play by the big boy's rules he will lose out.
>> This stinks of the old mob tactics of the protection racket.
> 
> 
> Oh, so MicroSoft has done such a good job of porting its software
> to many different hardware platforms, that it is difficult for
> others to do as well? MicroSoft has risked so much capital
> in purchasing the documentation on how to use some proprietary
> hardware that others who are unwilling to do so have a problem
> competing?
> 
> Is this what is meant by "coerce"?
> 
> Mike

You're overlooking another thing that Microsoft does: it demands the 
/exclusive/ right to place its OS on a computer vendor's machine. It's 
either all-or-nothing with them.

And if you /don't want/ MS Windows, you're still stuck with paying for 
it. Years ago someone started a movement to try to "return" the 
pre-installed OS. MS got wise to that and amended their EULA so that 
such returns were essentially at the discretion of the vendor--and then 
the vendors refused to honor returns of the OS. And these days, Dell 
ships computers /without/ any MS installation disks, so that there's 
nothing physical to return! (That, and you couldn't load Windows on a 
second machine even if in some fit of multimedia mania you wanted to.)

Result: Microsoft sells license after license for its OS, that many 
people will never use. No updates, either. Now where do I, as an 
organizer of corporations and LLC's, go to set up a business model 
whereby I might actually induce people to pay for /nothing at all/?

The only cure for this is going to be for someone to make widely 
available the names of the original manufacturers of laptop computers 
that get a Dell or HP label slapped on them, so that we Linux users can 
go /directly to them/ to buy our machines, and /not a penny/ (or a 
centime, or a pfennig, or a drachma, or a kopeck, or a yen, or whatever) 
will go to Microsoft for software and updates that we will not use.

Temlakos