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Why We Can't Just Get Along: The Bootloader
mccormi writes: "Byte has an article from the BeOS perspective on why we don't see more dual boot machines from vendors. Browser anticompetitive complaints are nothing compared to what's happening with the bootloaders since the majority of people using computers will never have the know-how or courage to make an OS change."
Yes, before you start replying here, please READ that Byte article. It will show you what really happened with the Ms antitrust case in the issue of the "secret license", and it will explain one of the fundamendal and most important reasons why Be was driven out of business and BeOS never became mainstream.
Linux is free. And yet there are no commercially available dual-boot machines on the market.... There is no other way to explain this phenomenon other than as a repercussion of the confidential Windows License under which every hardware vendor must do business.
No, Linux is not free to the vendor. It requires an extra configurator setting, more system testing, documentation and support cost, installer and boot-time software development, inclusion of CD-ROMs, and a few gigabytes off the hard disk. If there's not customer demand for the feature there's no point in the extra cost for the system vendor.
Tim
This was adressed in the article. BeOS was free, at least for a while, to be dual-booted with Windows. It would be technically trivial to enable dual-boot.
So you'd think vendors, who are straining for differentiation, would jump on the opportunity. This falls into the "can't hurt, could help" category.
*That* is why this looks suspiciously like the result of Microsoft tactics.
This guy starts to make a good statement, and then trips and makes a fool of himself in the comment you quoted.
Yes, it's a mistake to make a commercial OS, but not because people are complicit in accepting Windows. It's because Windows is the only OS that anyone will pay money for nowadays, and even that is beginning to change.
The OS has become a commodity. What OS you use is becoming largely irrelevant for the most popular tasks people use their computer for. It's not that no one can compete with MS; it's that there's simply no money in it any more, and only sheer momentum is what allows Microsoft to charge for Windows. But even then, most people don't pay directly for it anyhow; they get it with their computer, and never see the costs.
No, we're not complicit in supporting Microsoft; we're complicit in not going out and buying OSes of any kind.
This is akin to saying "The only things that get off the ground are airplanes, because they don't play by the rules of gravity". Every human activity obeys the rules of economics; at its core, economics is the study of how human labor and available resources are allocated. If some people allocate their labor to produce 'free' (insert your favorite sense of that term here) software, that is an economic activity just like any other.
A narrow view of economics which ignores volunteer labor, bartering of labor and resources, and value measures other than money will steadily diverge from the real world as this new century progresses. The net has finally allowed us to approximate the world of "perfect information" which allows the economy -- in all its many forms -- to operate at peak efficiency. To think that it will continue to do so within current market models is to profoundly miss the point.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
What a nice way to make a statement without having the facts or arguments to support it. "I don't feel like saying the Earth is flat, so I am not going to say it is, even though I believe it is, and most serious scientists will eventually agree with me."
What I will say is that MS, even *if* they are a monopoly and we assume so
What is a monopoly by your definition? Are 90% of the marketshare enough? 95%?
has done nothing to prevent you, the user
*beep* Wrong line of argument. Monopolies are not about direct coercion. Monopolies, while they do have immense market power, are not governments, otherwise they would be called governments. Monopolies, through accumulation of capital and mindshare, may be able to create a market in which it is impossible or very hard for competitors to thrive, even though this may be in the best interest of the consumers. Microsoft is such a monopoly.
"Freedom of choice" arguments sound nice and are exactly the kind of rhetoric you would expect a Microsoft-propagandist to employ -- however, they are fundamentally flawed in that they omit an essential factor that determines our decisions: information. By being a monopoly, Microsoft has the advantage (and, rarely, the disadvantage) of being the focus of all media attention. And they have loads of money to spend on propaganda, too. Your decision to use or not to use a Microsoft OS may be free of direct coercion, but it is certainly not free of manipulation. And because of the nature of an operating system, being the basis for all other software run on a computer, any program that is written exclusively for a Microsoft OS strengthens Microsoft's monopoly. Thus, any switchover can obviously only be gradual, with many people using two or more operating systems at the same time (which, incidentally, has been confirmed in a recent survey of 10000 Linux users, where only 38% used no other OS besides Linux -- even many professionals boot Windows NT or 2K together with Linux).
Linux is now in a position where it can actually compete with Windows in most fields, even in spite of Microsoft's market domination (a fact which lends tremendous support to arguments for open, patent-free software development). But consumers know little about Linux because of Microsoft's media domination, and they can't give it a try easily because of Microsoft's coercive OEM licensing. These are clearly practices of a monopoly by any reasonable definition, and they make it hard for the little competition to gain market share. Whether such practices are illegal under US antitrust law, I cannot say -- I care more about morals than about law. On the basis of morals, I can see no reasonable argument why the kind of coercive OEM licensing Microsoft uses should be allowed.
Its not about if anybody wants it, its about the possibility, the option!
Now, lets give an example. One of things about communist countries was, that you could not travel to the western countries. Not that anybody would want to do it and after the iron curtain fell, nobody actually does since they have no money to do it, but thats not the point. Now people are FREE to do it. They have the OPTION and the RIGHT. Its about your freedoms. Microsoft restricts freedoms of the OEMs to use the competetive solutions! and thats why its bad. Its not about how many people would actually buy. You will never know when you never try. And you never try, because Microsoft said so!
You don't give up your freedoms and your rights only because you just don't happen to have the need to exercise them!
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
>>Realistically, no hardware vendor could afford to do without Microsoft.
> Thats bullshit as well! Anyone of the large vendors could go head to head with MS any day of the week.
> IBM was prepared to do it, but chickened out at the last second.
>Compaq had at the time revenues easily topping that of MS.
>Dell is a freaking-gigantic monolith.
Your assertion are pointless: there is a cutthroat competition between PC hardware makers!!
The day one of those hardware makers make something which goes against Microsoft, his rebate on Microsoft software would be suppressed and instantly its PC sold with Microsoft software would be higher priced than those of its competitors: he would be dead in no time (or more likely he would have to do what Microsoft wants him to do to regain its rebate).
So even if the revenues of the PC makers are above those of Microsoft, they are very vulnerable to Microsoft decisions because of
1) the competition between PC makers
2) the Microsoft monopoly
3) the Microsoft rebates
I really hope that Be will sue Microsoft, IMHO they have a really strong point so Be should win..
But it's just my opinion of course, Microsoft have so much money and power that I suspect that there won't be any outcome of a trial: if they see that they will loose the trial, they would go for an out-of-court settlement..