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Countering the Arguments Against Unbundling Windows
An anonymous reader sends in a link to a blog posting by Con Zymaris arguing for competition regulators to force the unbundling of Windows from consumer PCs. The argument takes the form of knocking down one by one the objections raised by "unbundling skeptics."
"GASP! Windows won't be FREE!"
So many people only use Windows because they think they didn't pay for it. That's why they have such a low expectation of quality - when it crashes they say - Well, I didn't pay for it, so its not like I can ask for my money back."
Unbundle it and let the competition flow. I can see Apple doing a big push for OSX as an aftermarket product. Also, Novell's openSUSE 10.3 is a keeper.
Was the triple-negative really necessary?
This is covered in the article, but no, they shouldn't. No more than you'd expect a cell phone to come without software.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
From the Article: "What about the Apple Mac? Shouldn't that also have the OS X operating system unbundled? No, for two reasons. Firstly, the Apple Mac is a product with hardware and software from a single vendor. If Microsoft wanted to sell a Windows PC that it itself made, then this also wouldn't be a problem. It would substantially tick off Microsoft's hardware OEM partners, but wouldn't be a problem from a competitiveness perspective. In fact, if that happened, there would be a substantial acceleration of hardware partners adopting alternative platforms, like Linux. Secondly and more crucially, the Apple Mac doesn't have 95% market share, and the immense leverage that such market share delivers unto Microsoft. If Microsoft Windows only had 5% of the market, then there would be no pressure to unbundle it from consumer PCs. We wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place."
Author of TFA said "meme-transfer." Bzzzzt!
His use of "laissez-faire" as something other than "free" or "open" is simply bizarre.
His repeated insistence that Microsoft somehow got its monopoly dishonestly wears thin by the end of the piece -- even though I agree with him. (I once earnestly wished for Microsoft to eat IBM's lunch; I won't make that mistake again.)
I remember when the "real" computer stores looked the way videogame stores do today, with separate sections for each platform, and woe betide you if you picked up the wrong version of M.U.L.E. or Choplifter. I'd like to see an article that spells out in detail how we ended up with the Microsoft monoculture.
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
Sure us nerds can sit in our ivory tower and say that people would like Linux (or other alternatives)because they won't know the difference. But the truth is: people don't want to do backflips for an operating system in order to make it work the way they want. Windows just plain works for the vast majority of people. I guarantee that the unbundling of Windows from PCs in the EU will have no effect on Microsoft's sales just because people will use what they are comfortable with.
The game.
I think Ubuntu would have a very good shot at competing with Windows if users are given a choice...I have been mainly a Windows user for many years, but recently have been using Ubuntu on one of my workstations. Quite frankly, I have been VERY impressed with its usability and the choice of software available for free. Plus the ease at which you can install any additional software is very appealing. The other day, the integrated sound card on that PC started cutting out and I was dreading having Ubuntu start barking tons of error messages about unknown hardware, etc when I installed a spare sound card I had stuck in a cabinet (older Soundblaster card). But I was pleasantly surprised when the newly installed card started working with no prompts to install or download any drivers! My wife is big into digital photography and if I could get up to speed with The Gimp, I could totally ditch Windows!
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
> "I would think that if Linux was that much better than Windows, that consumers would demand Linux powered PCs. If you build it, they will come."
Most people don't even know about the possibility of alternatives. To them, a PC is any computer that runs Windows, same as, for a long time, the Internet was Internet Explorer or AOL.
The cost of an OEM Windows license is a large portion of the cost of a new machine, compared to any time in the past. For the cost of Windows and Office, you can buy 2 or 3 computers with no OS, and install linux. the problem is, the consumer is not given a choice, so we don't know how many would take the opportunity.
Since that choice never happens, software developers develop for the Windows platform, ensuring lock-in.
Of course, now that Novell's openSUSE can run Windows in a window in a VM, there's more reason to buy a new machine with linux, then move your old copy of XP or 2k to a virtual machine on your new box, rather than paying the Microsoft tax a second time (and yes, you can move your license to your new hardware, despite what Microsoft tries to FUD. Just make sure you remove it from your old hardware at the same time).
It seems to me that this is a bad idea for two reasons.
The first is that it would require vendors to ensure compatibility at all levels of two different configurations and have two sets of support. Support and warranties aren't free and the cost would be passed on to the consumer either directly as vendors recover the costs or indirectly to to crappy kit if the vendors fail to properly spend the money in the first place.
Secondly, it assumes that Linux has a god given right to exist on the mainstream desktop independent of its merits and that Windows is the inevitable winner unless someone stacks the deck. I take the long view and I think that in the end the platform that provides the best value will win and that the market will do its thing without the regulators taking sides. It might take 10 more years, but as computers evolve into things we can't even imagine (wearable? pervasive and ubiquitos with a universal network maybe?) that Windows will take it's place in the history books as will Linux.
Most people don't even know about the possibility of alternatives. To them, a PC is any computer that runs Windows, same as, for a long time, the Internet was Internet Explorer or AOL.
You miss the point. Buy a thousand motherboards, chips and cases, put Linux onto them, then walk into computer stores and sell them. There's nothing that precludes you from selling Linux PCs of your own brand.
Surely, someone could sell Linux PCs, preloaded off the Internet, or even through a catalog. At one time, Michael Dell built PCs in his dorm room and sold them over a catalog. Instead of trying to get the government to force Mr. Dell what to sell, why can't you sell what you think should be sold.
Please, spare me the excuses. Microsoft has no monopoly power over you, if you sell Linux powered PCs.
This is my sig.
I read tfc but I guess I'm stupid. I'm all for unbundling, but why can't I pick an OS and have Dell/Hp/whoever install it for me before shipping? I don't think the avarage consumer wants to install their own OS.
Actually, I think you're missing the point - competition only works when there is no pre-existing monopoly that got there via illegal means.
We depend on the government to step in to protect us from predators who use illegal means to gain control of a market, same as we depend on them, via police and firemen, for local protection from robbers and fire.
Extreme situations call for extreme measures - unbundling sales of the OS isn't anywhere near extreme. To turn your argument on its head - if Windows is so good, it should have no fear of being able to compete in a truly free marketplace, solely on its merit.
Free competition scares the crap out of Microsoft, because it can't win. Where its forced to compete, it loses market share - just look at the embedded, server, and cluster markets.
This suggestion might appeal to fellow slashdotters.
IMPLEMENTATION of the option :
As most of us know, installing an OS - any OS - properly for a given piece of hardware can be complicated. Getting the best possible drivers (which is not always the latest version), setting all the internal OS settings to appropriate ones for the computer being sold is a complex process. I am aware that many commodity PC makers do a shitty job of setting up the software for a PC, but they DO set it up a certain way when they make that disk image.
(if the computer is a gaming PC, the OS should be set to be efficient, if it is a work PC, it should be pre-installed with running anti-spyware and virus programs, ect)
SO...there would be recovery CDs, but everything would be on the new computer's hard drive.
When you start up the new pc, you would be taken to a screen where you can choose to
1. PAY the OEM price by credit card for Windows. The partition containing Windows preinstalled, a clean disk image all ready to go with appropriate drivers, is made the primary partition. The other partitions are deleted from the drive index table. There could easily be different options : Vista Home, Premium, XP, ect, and a version of Windows loaded with other programs in a bundle. You could either pay directly if the PC is connected to the internet, or, when you bought the PC you would have been given an activation number to type in.
2. Pay nothing, have the Ubuntu partition made primary
3. Pay nothing, wipe the disk so that you can install your own OS.
A small entry would be added to the BIOS Flash once you pay for Windows successfully. That way, if you have to use the Windows recovery disk, the PC already knows if you have paid for the software or not.
It isn't. No matter how you try to cut it - geekiness is ingrained into the culture.
Look! This text is on a different line.
I used <br> tags.
Slashdotters are so used to doing things in a technical way that they disregard the very real usability issues that surround Open Source. If I put text on a different line in this textbox I should not have to know or care about the br tag. This is FOSS's greatest barrier to adoption in a nutshell.
Shh.
1) Microsoft is a convicted monopoly. Apple is not.
2) Microsoft has a hugely bigger install base than Apple does.
3) Microsoft does not make computers or bundles of hardware/OS. Apple does.
Forcing Apple to play by the rules that should apply to Microsoft doesn't make sense; not now, anyway.
These articles that talk about how Microsoft is shoved down our throats read more like Geek fan fiction than actual good policy. Its as if the writers fantasize about a way to show people Linux is the one true Operating System, and the only way is to take away the convenience of using Windows. No manufacturer is FORCED to bundle Microsoft XP or Vista with their hardware. They have the option of not including an operating system at all, or also selling Linux versions. The reason this is not more prevalent is that there is no demand for it. If there were wide demand for pre-installed Linux boxes, they would be out there all over the place. I can recall quite a few Linux boxes that were sold as ultra-low cost alternatives to Windows boxes and they failed in sales quite badly. One of them that comes to mind was sold at ALDI. Microsoft may have unethical tactics, but to force changes on the way computer manufacturers bundle and sell their equipment is an exercise best left to communist and socialist countries where the government knows better than the consumers and businesses in the market place. There is no barrier to computer sales that I can see. If I wanted to, I could sell a director_mr brand computer tomorrow. BUT BUT no one would buy it you might say. That is because the demand for computers is being met adequately by the marketplace. If you really think there is demand for pre-installed Linux boxes then sell them, and become the next Dell or Gateway or HP. Forcing Dell or Gateway or HP to be what YOU want them to be by changing the laws and making them become that is VERY inefficient and foolish.
It is even easier than that. Manufacturers should be even allowed to PRELOAD MS-Windows and not include any other OS, if they want. As long as it is UNLICENSED. If the customer wants to ACTIVATE the preloaded MS-Windows, let them pay for it separately (for the activation code), and not through the hardware vendor.
In this way, people who want MS-Windows have it. They have it quickly. They have it easily. They have it customized by the OEM. But people who do not want (or need) it, do not have to pay for it and are not pressured into it by the OEM. They don't have to order "special" models.
"The craziest part is, you obsess over Dell PCs, and Dell's are the biggest stock part PCs of them all. They don't do anything special - stock motherboards, stock CPUs, stock graphics cards. There's nothing Dell puts into a PC that you could not put into yours when you sell it."
All my PCs are self-built (laptops excepted). Been like that for years and years. I have never owned a Dell or a Gateway.
"There's absolutely no reason a consumer could not benefit from that offering, and its not Microsoft's fault that you Linux people are too big of pussies to actually sell your own offerings."
Actually, now that Christmas is coming, I plan to give away a few hard disk/openSUSE install combos as small presents. I know a few people who are running windows on hardware thats 2-3 years old, and could use both the extra disk space, and the stability of linux. They'll be able to continue running Windows via a VM (no longer a need to dual-boot) until they get used to the new setup.
There's tons of Windows users out there who are only a hard disk away from running linux. They get to keep all their old data, they don't have to shell out big bucks for the latest bloatware, etc.
If every linux user did this for just 2 people this Christmas, Microsofts' stranglehold on the market would be over in a year.
Comments here seem to somehow imply that manufacturers should want to include a copy of Windows in some fashion with a PC that the customer can choose to pay the OEM price for. They would - seemingly - pay Microsoft for this.
Well, that isn't how it works. The reason the OEM price is less than the retail price is because the computer manufacturer put Windows on the machine and tailored it specifically for that environment and what not. They also get to absorb the tech support load. You do not get to call Microsoft and run up their support expenses with an OEM license. Instead, you call the computer manufacturer because part of the OEM deal is they handle support calls.
So, without the ability to control how Windows is installed on the computer it is unlikely the manufacturer is going to give you OEM tech support or an OEM price. Microsoft isn't going to give you the OEM price and take the support call load. So this would require people to pay retail price for Windows and go to Microsoft for support.
Microsoft would love to do this. The OEM deal is in the consumers and manufacturers best interest and not all that great for Microsoft. Except for perhaps reinforcing the dominance of Windows which is unlikely to be dimenshed any time soon. Microsoft would experience 2x or 3x their current revenue should this happen.
No it doesn't.
If Microsoft wanted to sell a Windows PC that it itself made, then this also wouldn't be a problem. TFA says that Microsoft were to sell the entire package themselves, fine. It's the forced bundling with other manufacturer's products that's the problem."I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Really, all you need to do is set up a Linux PC company and run it kinda like the way Apple does..
I thought you said they should not run it like a cult.
Whichever way you look at it, it's true. I'm not.
Did you read that article at all? It says, the proportional cost of bundled software climbed from 5% to 50%
.NET, for business applications development
Ah, but what's the proportional value of the software? See, you need to think more like a salesperson. Cost is irrelevant. It's the value that is added. And, look at all the value Windows adds to a PC..
a) You have Direct X 10, for games. And, there are a ton of games for Windows.
b) You
c) You have a pretty good web browser. Yeah, IE has its flaws, but it works pretty good for most people. That is, I can go to the baseball site, get the scores, and it works.
d) You have interfaces to a whole bunch of consumer appliances, from digital cameras and video players, and more.
e) Vista has a really cool sound model that I am eager to play with.
f) Unicode (UTF-16) is built in from the ground up. NTFS stacks up well against Reiser and ExtN for most applications. Remote Desktop and Terminal Services for Windows work really well...
This is my sig.
My solution: Every computer retail store should inform how much of the price is Windows tax. For example: $500, where $150 is Windows Vista Bangtastic. And you should be able to choose not to accept the licence when you buy it, and they will remove the activation CD, so you can't activate it.
I'm constantly running into people with expensive laptops or years of usage who truly want an appliance PC, and have settled into an uneasy compromise of knowing just what to do to get predictable effects, like reading email. These are people who call the computer a 'hard drive' or think that IE is 'the internet' because that's what it says in the start menu, often professionals who rely on computers, often in their 50's. The mere mention of changing to another operating system truly freaks them out, because they've invested enough braintime to not be so afraid of the damn thing. Even using a Mac is threatening because they 'don't know where anything is' [translation: where the start menu is, etc.].
Computers badly fail the 'appliance' test. I tell them that they should learn to use it, the same way a carpenter has to learn a table saw or plumb line, but get chagrined shrugs.
So, next week, I'm starting an afterschool computer club at my kids' school. They've just moved the whole district to Fedora via the Linux Terminal Server Project, w00t, no hardware replacement costs in my tax bill, so it's just getting interesting here in this small community, there's hope for the kids, more likely they'll convert the old farts by importing linux into the home.
Damn those pesky terrorists
> Ah, but what's the proportional value of the software? See, you need to think more like a salesperson. Cost is irrelevant. It's the value that is added. And, look at all the value Windows adds to a PC.
.NET, for business applications development
First, cost is not irrelevant. Value is important. Granted, Windows comes with a certain unique feature set. But seriously, you are not comparing that value to a Linux desktop distro that has just about every software a regular user would need? The pieces that are missing are mostly because there is a monopoly OS out there (Third party proprietary software, driver, formats).
a) You have Direct X 10, for games. And, there are a ton of games for Windows.
Hard to argue. But without the monopoly status, DirectX cannot maintain as much lead. It still is better than OpenGL alternatives though.
b) You
Not compelling. Too many other alternatives now.
c) You have a pretty good web browser. Yeah, IE has its flaws, but it works pretty good for most people. That is, I can go to the baseball site, get the scores, and it works.
Every desktop OS now comes with an browser. IE works for most people because that is all they know. Once they understand taking advantage of FireFox plugins, they never go back. That has been the case with every IE user who has watched me use my browser more than a few minutes.
d) You have interfaces to a whole bunch of consumer appliances, from digital cameras and video players, and more.
So do Linux distros. Windows market status attracts driver support from appliance makers, but not as much of an advantage of the software architecture per se.
e) Vista has a really cool sound model that I am eager to play with.
I don't know much about it. I will skip that.
f) Unicode (UTF-16) is built in from the ground up. NTFS stacks up well against Reiser and ExtN for most applications. Remote Desktop and Terminal Services for Windows work really well...
Don't know about UTF-16 enhancements. RDP is a good but remoting X and Linux Terminal Server work quite well too. Don't forget though that to have these features you have to pay quite a bit more too. Sure, but NTFS is good enough. But good enough is not what we are talking about. We are talking about what they offer to justify 95% market share and making computers cost significantly higher when they barely manage to go up against free alternatives. I expect 6 billion in productions costs to do a lot more.
And this is not a new argument. This has all played out before. When IE won the browser wars, MS froze all further development on it (the team was disbanded as I recall), after all it made no business sense to spend any more money on it. The only reason that we even have an updated IE7 is because of FireFox. That is the price of a monopoly.
Yes, I know this is slashdot, but you could try reading the article. There's a whole section called "But Windows only constitutes a mere 10% of the price of a PC, right?" which might interest you.
Quotes:
"Windows has reached 35% of the price of a new computer."
"52% of the price of a new Acer laptop was constituted by the forced-bundling of Microsoft and other Windows platform software"
No sig today...
Unbundling windos is not about Linux. It really isn't.
It's about opening up the market to other competitors. Another Beos? Another OS/2? There is no reason why there should be only two OS available for computers, one of them only managing to still stick around because it's free (in both senses).
There is no operating system market. Unbundling windos is about re-creating that market. Innovation (not only in features!) only happens in a free market. That's what this is all about.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org