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Dell dumps linux



The way it sounded from the dell email, the new contracts will be same for
every vendor who wants to play the game.  As for HPQ and the IBM they'll
only sign a contract that applies to some specific subsection of their pc
market.

The question I wonder about is why microsoft would do something that would
so blatantly show why they are a monopoly.  This is something that the DOJ
can go to the courts and say "This stifles competition, period."  If
tomorrow some company was get their hands on BeOS and trying to sell it,
they'd be screwed because they'd have no OEM's that be allowed to install
their OS. What's sadder is that Dell and all the other OEM's have been given
the preverbal spanking for getting out of line, which the penny pinchers at
Dell will be quick to hold up the new contract and say "See, I told you that
we should have just stuck with microsoft and did what they said, see where
it got us."

Maybe microsoft has realized something, the DOJ is too busy ripping our
personal liberties out from under our feet to bother.   The DOJ is more than
happy to keep the status-quo going.  As long as none of their friends are
being hurt, they don't really care.  Since a million people aren't on the
steps of the capitol building screaming for bill gates head on a stick,
their really not interested in pursuing a messy technical trial that's going
to be expensive and really doesn't serve any governmental interest.  Now if
some key senators districts has software companies that were getting
screwed, things would be totally different.

I wonder if we could pinpoint the point in this countries history that it
stopped being about democracy and started being about greed.  We probably
could, but would immediately be put in jail for violating some sub rule in
the DMCA for breaking histories encryption...

Tim.


-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Jackson [mailto:bejackso at lynx.dac.neu.edu]
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 15:00 PM
To: Kent Borg
Cc: Jerry Feldman; discuss at blu.org
Subject: Re: Dell dumps linux


On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Kent Borg wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 02:00:36PM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> > It's interesting that Dell did not push back. It might be a
> > marketing opportunity for HP/Compaq and IBM. Because both of these
> > companies produce a large number of Unix and Linux servers, I'm not
> > sure if Microsoft can enforce this.
> 
> In the thing I read Dell claims this will apply to competitors too.  I
> wonder how that works.

Well, Dell's contract won't apply to other Vedors, but MSFT pricewars
will. MSFT will charge $BIGNUM if they sell non-MSFT OS's, and <$BIGNUM.
Any business person worth their salt will drop Linux, etc. if their
current sales of that product are worth less then $BIGNUM[0]-$BIGNUM[1].  

						~Ben

--
/"\	Ben Jackson
\ /     bejackso at lynx.dac.neu.edu - http://www.innismir.net/~bbj
 X      Member of the ASCII Ribbon Campaign Against HTML Mail
/ \

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