While I'm afraid the entire industry will fight this idea for all it's worth, the way software is licensed really needs to change so the consumer has rights and/or recourse. Trying to break a 900 pound gorilla into smaller monkeys is not going to solve a basic problem of consumer protection.
Presently, the consumer who purchases Win32 has no rights to use the product for anything other than one installation on one computer. The owner of the media on which the software is delivered does not have the right to sell, give or lend said media. I'm not trying to say that Windows should be free, but I don't think that Microsoft should be the sole overlord of the computing experience.
Just like the government has regulatory bodies in order to protect consumers from bad food products (FDA) and monitor the airwaves, (FCC) the software industry really needs to be watched. Just setting some ground rules for consumers would be a start If Microsoft was not allowed to impose restrictions on the OEM or end consumer who purchased their software, and ownership could be transfered, perhaps none of these monkeyshines would have been neccessary.
Think about it: Microsoft doesn't sell a product, they sell licenses to *USE* their product. Their profitablity derives not from selling something incredibly cheap to produce (like Pepsi) but from selling a product that requires YOU to add the sugar and the water (like Kool-Aid) then they tell you what you can't do with it and take credit for the hard work! As much as they hem and haw about "the difficulty and complexity of maintaining the software", once their initial investment is made back, people are just handing them money.
If Microsoft is really going to be "punished" for being the most egregious example of what IT corporate greed hath wraught, I don't think they should be singled out. The software industry, for all the money it makes and all the "opportunies" (read "temp slave work") it creates, really needs to be held to account for it's own mistakes. As much as I hate to have to involve the government, some consumer protection laws need to be put in place in order to keep corporations "honest" or at least less deceitful.
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While I'm afraid the entire industry will fight this idea for all it's worth, the way software is licensed really needs to change so the consumer has rights and/or recourse. Trying to break a 900 pound gorilla into smaller monkeys is not going to solve a basic problem of consumer protection.
Presently, the consumer who purchases Win32 has no rights to use the product for anything other than one installation on one computer. The owner of the media on which the software is delivered does not have the right to sell, give or lend said media. I'm not trying to say that Windows should be free, but I don't think that Microsoft should be the sole overlord of the computing experience.
Just like the government has regulatory bodies in order to protect consumers from bad food products (FDA) and monitor the airwaves, (FCC) the software industry really needs to be watched. Just setting some ground rules for consumers would be a start If Microsoft was not allowed to impose restrictions on the OEM or end consumer who purchased their software, and ownership could be transfered, perhaps none of these monkeyshines would have been neccessary.
Think about it: Microsoft doesn't sell a product, they sell licenses to *USE* their product. Their profitablity derives not from selling something incredibly cheap to produce (like Pepsi) but from selling a product that requires YOU to add the sugar and the water (like Kool-Aid) then they tell you what you can't do with it and take credit for the hard work! As much as they hem and haw about "the difficulty and complexity of maintaining the software", once their initial investment is made back, people are just handing them money.
If Microsoft is really going to be "punished" for being the most egregious example of what IT corporate greed hath wraught, I don't think they should be singled out. The software industry, for all the money it makes and all the "opportunies" (read "temp slave work") it creates, really needs to be held to account for it's own mistakes. As much as I hate to have to involve the government, some consumer protection laws need to be put in place in order to keep corporations "honest" or at least less deceitful.