Re: Anti-MS drivel

[Tobias Weisserth <tobias () weisserth de>]

Hi Ron,

Am Di, den 20.01.2004 schrieb Ron DuFresne um 23:03:
> > Up to now they rule the consumer OS market with more than 90% market
> > share. Any error they make regarding default settings in their OS
> > affects 90% of all end consumers. It is impossible to require that many
> > customers to adapt. Rather the vendor has to adapt. This is only
> > logical.
>
> What's the incentive to make the vendor change?  It's going to take one
> HUGE boycott to achieve that, HUGE becuase the market is worlwide, and we
> can't get a few thousand users on this single FD list to agree to much
> from one day to the next, let alone to get a large international boycott
> up and running, despite the dependance of many gov's and home users, and
> corps upon the M$ code.  So far the feds and a number of state in the US
> have not been up to forcing change in redmond, even with million dollar a
> day fines once imposed.

This isn't solved by just one incentive or pulling a single lever.

The ultimate solution to solve this problem would be a free market with
free competition and no entry barriers for potential competitors for
Microsoft. It's not about slicing MS in two parts as the US prosecution
wanted to. That's the wrong side.

Deregulate the market. Make competition possible again. Limit the extend
software patents are applicable to. Why should a patent on a technology
like software be valid for DECADES? After that, no possible competitor
has a value for that technology. Software patents are legalised
monopolies. There's a VERY good reason most European software vendors
are against software patents in Europe while the American,
MS/Oracle/Sun/etc. led BSA is propagating software patents in Europe to
extend their monopoly on certain technologies that define access to
markets.

Apply liability laws to software and IT products in general. When I buy
hardware, I have a legally guaranteed period of 6 months to 1 year in
Germany within which the vendor is liable 100%. Why doesn't such a thing
exist with software? EULAs as MS is issuing them are contrasting current
laws. In fact, a MS EULA in Germany isn't worth the paper it is printed
on. The MS EULA in Germany isn't 100% valid since it doesn't comply with
German law.

Did I mention competition? Well, it's the most important lever to assure
quality and low prices in products so repetition is not bad.

> And let's face it, many of the folks on this and other lists that buy a
> PC, wipe windows and install a *bsd or linux/*nix clone, are still
> contributing to the redmond  bottom line of their big buck, cause most
> those PC's come pre-installed with a M$ OS underneath.

Which PC vendors can't decide on their own since OEM contracts issued by
MS are rather restrictive. Either you take it or you don't take MS
products at all... This is a case where anti-trust laws should permit
vendors to ignore the restrictive parts of such agreements whenever this
excludes competition. Competition is capitalism. Capitalism is living of
free markets with no entries. This MS situation is close to living in
communist East-Germany before 1991 where people could buy one sort of
car which was very expensive and sucked.

> What do they care if that software license sits in a drawer and remains unused after first
> turning on the system?  They made their share <smile>.

That's absolutely true. But I guess real MS refuseniks don't buy
hardware with OEM software attached to it and invest the additional time
to buy individual hardware components and build their own system from
scratch. That's cheaper anyway since you really get what you want and
the OEM software attached to new PCs isn't really free because it's
somehow included in the price.

> And most on these list should understand as well, I do not disagree with
> the anti-M$ sentiments, I've posted many of my own over the years, but, I
> do know better then to lie to myself and think that M$ on the desktop or
> in the corporate world is faced with any major threat at this time from
> redhat or suse.

Not yet but the ball started to move. Once the critical mass is reached
we'll actually be moving into a situation again where competition is
part of the market. Look at Munich, Germany. They may be having trouble
doing so but they decided to switch 14.000 desktop PCs to SuSE. This is
a small start. But with initiatives rolling in Asia and South America I
don't think MS can count on being the only desktop OS vendor in the near
future.

> Understand this is not going to be a simple boycott by a few thousand or
> hundred thousand buyers of bannanas from say nicaragua...

I'm not speaking about a boycott. I'm speaking about vendor liability
and free choice (actually free markets, but it's nearly the same).

cheers,
Tobias

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