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Gateway Testifies To Microsoft's OEM Treatment
unconfused1 writes "Gateway testified yesterday about the incredible power that Microsoft wields over OEMs concerning Windows being shipped on every PC. It seems that if an OEM does not ship Windows on every PC they ship that they are severely penalized, and can have their license revoked."
I would love to see what Dell has to say about the OEM agreements with MS. After all they did support Linux for a little while. Now that seems to have gone by the waist-side. I also wonder what the reprecussions of Gateway speaking out against MS.
I've always known this was true, but now we have a REAL company vouching it..but how does MS do it? Do they send goons in and say "if you don't install Windows we will break your legs?" I mean, how is this different from racketeering? The Mafia does that in major cities with Waste Management. You can only use THEIR company, or they break your legs or set your building on fire. WHich is very similar to how tings work in Eastern-bloc countries.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Testimony like this and Michael Tiemann's puts lie to the MSFT propaganda about how consumers made them the multi-billion dollar owner of 90% of the market.
It's pretty plain that consumers have *never* been offered a choice. No "market" for PC OSes ever existed.
The basic message is that MS can't do Jack Shit to OEMs, except of course to force them to pay the proper price for Windows licences, and not receive
any bonuses.
This would make the OEMs less able to compete, price-wise with their fellow scum-sucking OEMs.
Well, boo hoo, why should I care what happens to these unscrupulous box-shifters?
Look at the facts: extended warranties of doom, badly-configured machines with the wrong drivers installed, corners cut to keep the price down (Tom's did a thing on OEMs recently, pointing out that they like to push the main specs like Pentium 4 1.8!!!! And then not mention the crappy $15 video card etc., which is true), help-lines that don't even when you get through to them, incompetence on all levels....
Plus, just think- these OEMs aren't doing anything to earn their money- just employing people very little money to assemble pcs, man help-lines etc.
I know I am going to get modded down as -1 flamebait for this because The Common Man moderates, but seriously, to paraphrase Monty Python: "What have the OEMs ever done for us?"
graspee
According to the article, The new terms would affect contracts written after Dec. 16 for the top 20 PC makers. and Fama concluded that the new uniform pricing mechanism benefits those companies selling the highest volumes, such as Dell Computer. and "Dell may not want to be a witness, but Dell is affected in similar ways to Gateway because of uniform licensing."
Maybe Dell has already spoken. Reference this recent slashdot article:
More on Dell Dropping Linux Support
Does your grocery store endorse Pepsi when they sell Pepsi? Do you find that their "endorsement" has less meaning when they also sell Coke in the same aisle?
I guess I don't see the "endorsement" angle here - retailers like Gateway or your local grocery store aren't endorsers of anything; they just stock what the public will buy and advertise it all.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you're Dell), only one company of any type can be on the FastTrack program. so, if you're buying a desktop for your employees,you buy Dell because it's easy. The program lasts 2 or 3 years, I think.
So long as Dell retains their FastTrack status, they're set.
IBM has already had a taste of Microsoft's wrath. Microsoft came very close to forcing IBM to pay full retail price for the Windows 95 licenses that IBM needed to ship a competitive PC. That would have been a huge cost disadvantage for IBM. Microsoft was pissed off about IBM shipping PCs with OS/2 and Lotus SmartSuite, a competitor to Microsoft Office. From published reports, the OEM contract negotiations were very nasty. Microsoft's attitude was that IBM was not a "team player" if they bundled any software that Microsoft viewed as a threat to their own products.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
...Why couldn't an OEM hide behind a subsidiary or spinoff marque that they could use to sell hardware without the M$ tax.
Suppose that, OK, Gateway computers HAVE to have Windows, because Gateway must follow the Way of Gates. But what's to stop Gateway from spinning off a tiny company called "Freeway, a subsidiary of Gateway" or whatever, and have *that* company sell all the non-M$ OSes they want? So M$ strips Freeway of any license to bundle M$ software. Freeway thumbs its nose and says, "So what?" Meanwhile, Gateway mocks sympathy for M$ and says, "You know, I really do wish we could better control those rogues down at Freeway. But our organization just doesn't have that level of control over our subsidiaries."
Why couldn't this work?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Actually, it goes to establishing continued behavior.
In this particular case it's even MORE important. The OEM License that Gateway is commenting about is the "new and improved" license that has been created by MS to comply with the DoJ's proposed settlement. This goes directly towards proving how inneffective the proposed settlement is.
If the actual license is how it has been portrayed and this is the new license to meet the DoJ's criteria, then I think it goes quite far in proving that the settlement doesn't do anything. In fact, it seems to make the situation worse. I find it quite amusing that this license seems to reinstitute the old per-CPU license by calling it a royalty.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Microsoft bullying OEMs isn't news. What's news is that someone actually has the guts to testify about it. Microsoft is quite capable of making Gateway suffer for this.
***
Gateway's move was pretty smart, actually. Microsoft can't do ANYTHING to them or else they will have something else to testify and/or sue about.
If a) MS loses their Trademark suit, and b) the OEMs get a backbone, they could offer Lindows as their next "upgrade" to their computers. The user might not even know that something was going on.
Engineering and the Ultimate
You really have to think about how things came to be this bad. Way back in the old 3.x days, if MS would have tried to pull something like this in the licensing, the OEM's would have told them to take a flying leap and installed OS2.
No, this is incorrect. If you remember, the current anti-trust trial was preceeded by the DoJ trying to enforce a 1994 consent decree. This consent decree was created because Microsoft was using illegal tactics to compete against OS/2 in "the old 3.x days".
Is it the drug dealer's fault for selling crack, or is it the addicts fault for trying it?
Bad analogy. Everyone is better off with a standard OS ABI (be it a de facto standard, like DOS/Windows, or a de jure standard like POSIX). There wasn't really a standard microcomputer ABI in the early 80's. CP/M came close, but the biggest microcomputer vendors (Apple, Commodore, Atari) didn't support it as standard equipment. DOS (and then Windows) arose because people needed a standard ABI. It isn't the OEM's fault that the owner of the standard is willing to break the law to protect their profits.
(NB: because there are people who always complain when I call "Windows" a standard: please note the different between an "open standard" and a "standard" and also the difference between a "de jure" standard and a "de facto" standard).
Because VA had to compete against price-leader Dell and others selling systems with Linux loaded on them. It's possible that MS only tolerated Dell selling Linux as long as VA was still out there.
This article is interesting in this regard. And I quote:
So, at one time, it was OK with Microsoft for the OEMs to meet demand, but not to push Linux. Then, later, they clearly pressured Gateway and Dell to drop it completely.
VA Linux no longer out there pushing Linux? Another highly visible Linux company down...