Sure, anyone can cobble together their own distribution. But would an end-user organization like Merrill Lynch want to?
Actually it would make sense for any large corporate to put together their own distribution. The chances of a commercially sold distribution exactly meeting their actual needs are remote. A commercial distribution is far more likely to attempt to be "jack of all trades". They could easily be faced with headaches about getting things they don't want or need out of a commercial distribution (e.g. Suse by default assumes that networking tools need ppp and ISDN support...)
If you grab sack and do the job right and take responsability for your own internal OS installation, building a linux server won't cost much money out-of-pocket.
It might make sense to use a distribution as a foundation. Depends if the cost of buying one is less than the time your staff would need to do things from scratch.
Many companies won't do this, and so they claim that linux isn't free, that you have to pay companies like RedHat and SuSE for their work, when in reality, they'd rather pay someone for their work than do it themselves. and then complain about why they had to pay someone else.
They are generally paying for someone elses labour.
Try to get a copy of Suse Linux for S/390. They charge for the distribution per CPU. Like $6000 per CPU.
Sure the software is free, but you still pay for the bundling and the distribution of the software, and there is no specification as to how or how much they charge for those services...
You can charge whatever you think people will pay. Which is a function of how much you think your customers will judge accepable. However the difference is that open source software is a freely available comodity. (With proprietary software there can be no competition.) Anyone can set up a business selling a software bundle and support for OSS. In the same way that anyone can set up a business selling bottled water or compressed air.
You have to look at what the end user needs to accomplish and see if there is a cohesive way, under Linux, to provide it reliably and effectively.
We used to call this kind of thing "systems analysis". Except that you'd start with fewer preconceptions...
If the users' only requirement is a term emulator, an e-mail client, and a spreadsheet app, can't that be handled under Linux six ways to Sunday?? Personally, I'm more inclined than ever before to try to go diskless on the desktop so that my IT plant has fewer moving parts and less replication cost.
Consider also that workstations are the parts of the system which get most wear and tear and are most prone to accidental or deliberate damage (even theft). So it makes sense to miminise the cost of workstations and to have things so spares can easily be swapped in...
In anything but the smallest companies, employees are prohibited with the threat of termination from installing software theirselves. Licensing and data security aside, it just destabilizes office politics. Everybody wants what is in the office next to theirs.
However often this is said a fair number of Slashdot posters just don't appear to "get it". Also the issues left aside, licencing, data security, stability and support, are in themselves very important and potentially very expensive issues.
In your scenero, it's much more likely that the employee fills out a "software needs" form, it gets signed off by the supervisor and possibly a finance guy, and then a help desk person installs it.
Assuming that the employee actually has a genuine reason for needing the software.
Now, here's where things get interesting. Despite MS's best efforts, generally a person has to be dispatched to the physical desktop.
Which has cost implications, either someone can't do any work whilst their machine is updated or you need a whole set of staff working outside normal working hours.
With any *nix, even if it *isn't* a matter of just setting something on the server, then you can use ftp and telnet to install everything, a process which can easily be scripted as well.
The former is often the more likely with a unix type system... Also what about the senario where the use of the program needs to follow the person rather than workstation or person@workstation? (Or even that user can use that program on any machine in a specific department but no acess outside that department.) This is far more difficult using Windows than it is with any kind of unix system.
In an enterprise situation, Linux is more than ready for the desktop.
In many relevent ways it has been more ready than Windows ever has been.
. Many many desktops out there sit running a specialized app tied to the corporate database, plus an email app. That's it.
Not always even the "plust and email app". Some of these systems even involve a DOS window maximised to fill the screen or even a terminal emulator. The problem is that quite a few places appear to have built specialised applications tried strongly to either Windows or MS Office and fear that attempting to untie them will be too costly. So they stick with the "devil they know" patching them to work with the latest version of Windows and/or Office. With out anyone looking to see if this makes sense or is sustainable long term.
Purchasing managers are very much driven by the "one throat to choke" myth. They think that, if something is screwed up with commercial software, there's someone they can sue. This, despite the fact that nobody really has done so, because both the licenses and the law protect the vendors. Same goes with support. I've dealt with the major commercial vendors as well as developers of several OSS efforts, and I've had consistently better bug-fix turnaround with open-source.
Problem with "support" it appears to have the meanings of both evading responsibility for something going wrong and actually getting things fixed in they do go wrong. Open source support does the latter very well, but the former not at all. Proprietary software does the former very well and the latter to some extent or other. Part of the problem is that software is seen as some kind of special "magic" thing. So the usual rules about having redundant supplies for goods and services arn't applied. Usually the purchaser is in a position of power, since they can go elsewhere. With proprietary software (and the support for it) the supplier is in the position of power, because their customer cannot simply go elsewhere. With open source the balance of power goes back to the purchaser...
And if you intentionally tricked people into using your technology without mentioning that little matter of a patent, then you can actually lose your patent.
Unfortunatly it's only "can", there dosn't appear a method for automatically depth charging such "submarine patents"...
I think there are lots of legal implications of open-source software that just haven't been thought out, or tested in court. It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which some previously unthought-of aspect of IP law renders the GPL invalid.
This would appear to be a far bigger risk with commercial software related licences. Especially ones which are considerably more complex or attempt to redefine copyright law (or in the case of EULAs contract law.) About the only ways in which you could render the GPL invalid would either be to revoke copyright on software (all software is public domain) or revoke licencing of copyright works (if you want your work published you must put it into the public domain.)
The question of ownership is sticky - the owner of any particular bit of code might be difficult to determine and impossible to track down.
There are plenty of problems using proprietary code. Especially if you later discover that that the supplier didn't actually write most ofg the program. e.g. the "we licenced this from someone else, used a third party IDE to develop on, etc".
This has some bearing on her question about patent violations which is frankly quite legitimate. Consider a company that is using open source software and has made changes to it to meet internal requirements. Suppose then a software company comes along claiming infringement of patented methods in that software package - is the company using the software liable if the software is found to be infringing because in changing the source they have become authors of the software?
How could this senario occur without the software company concered enguaging in espionage and probably copyright infringement. If anyone modifies GPL code and only uses it internally then they don't need to licence it at all. The only way in which they could even see the code is by pirating it. Then the only way in which the software company could defend themselves against the charge of being a software pirate would be to place their works into the public domain.
It wasn't until we weighed it against the cost of redeveloping 120 applications for Linux that we decided to cave. MS knows this. They waited for companies to become dependant on their OS before jacking up the price.
Hardly an original idea. Also where do the figures for redeveloping the applications to be more portable come from? After all these can't be that old. Are these actually applications or macros and addons to Microsoft office? If the latter you could be in for a bumpy ride anyway.
Funny how these people happily ignore all the problems of closed source apps, isn't it? The security issues, the continual upgrade payments, the bloated system requirements, the worry of the company dying and support drying up. Not to mention the cost.
You'd have though the risk of tieing their business to the vendor would set alarm bells ringing. But too often it dosn't. Apparently they honest believe that some contracts (probably written by the vendor to favour the vendor) will protect them...
The most pathetic thing in the world is a prisoner what spends their time rationalising about how much better off they are than those poor saps that have to pay for rent and food outside.
An apt analogy. Wonder how many of these "we arn't a computer company so we can rely on a vendor rather than employing some IT professionals" are prefectly happy to employ (or contract) lawyers even though they arn't lawfirms...
We get PCs from Dell, wipe them completely, and put our own disk images on them according to department (different departments, different needs).
Exactly the sort of thing the majority of corporate IT departments do. But still people like to claim that OEM installs even have a point.
The largest obstacle for office suites to overcome is file format compatibility. Star Office 6.0 beta completely destroys Word 2000 documents, and forget about Word importing Star Office documents. In order to overcome this a company would have to make a sweeping, blanket change in software policies so that everyone used the same productivity suite.
Just hope that Microsoft dosn't suddently require you to "upgrade" from 2000.
But then I can only imagine the numbers of people bringing illegal copies of Office from home and using that in order to avoid learning how to use different software. Most people in non-technical positions (order management, billing) have no concept of copyrights and audits. It's much safer for the company to buy a license for Office and not worry about it.
But that dosn't cover you for any other software your users might bring in from home or the time which might be involved sorting out the consequences of their vandalism.
In my view, it is a bit too late to speak of "features" and "prices" as an MS Office killer (of any version). Why? For years, corporate office (average Joe/Jane employee/consumer) users have gotten used to the "look-and-feel" of MS Office -- it is a tool that they have become so familiar with for better or worse.
You must be thinking of a different Microsoft Office. The one I am familiar with comes out with a different "look and feel" every 18-24 months:) Also nowhere outside computer GUI's would this argument be anything other than laughable.
A lot of consumers beleive you get what you pay for. Most aren't going to spend $400 for a full copy of XP, but they see that in the store and when they buy a computer with OfficeXP SBE (a cheaper version) they think they really have something. "Why would anyone charge $400 for a product if it wasn't worth it?"
Sounds like the same sort of thing computer magazine cover disks do when they say "As sold for xyz". Which could just as easily mean "we tried to sell it for xyz, but no-one actually though it was worth that much".
If it has the features I need and use rather than the features MS thinks I need, then it's an Office Killer for me. It doesn't need all the features of OfficeXP - it just needs the features that I need, and shoulnd't crash or screw up my documents!
Is a comparison with Office XP meaningful. Office 2000, even 97 appears to have far greater usage.
As the DMCA is an American Law, what would happen if they distribute the servers over different nations and continents?
The US will lean on the rest of the world to pass similar laws in the name of "globalization" and "harmonization". They will also lean on their allies to do so out of "friendship". Against any militarily weak nation they could threaten military action. (The covert CIA kind, rather the the B52 bombers on CNN kind though.)
Although the majority of them seem to come from europe, etc, what are the ramifications as to the charges if they are not US-Based non-profit organizations/servers?
What probably matters is not if these organisations make a profit or not. But if there is a potential that they might reduce the profits of US "high^H^H^H^Hcorporate citizens".
I see some server-to-server bandwidth sharing ala p2p, as tonnes of individual servers maybe take 100 or so users. Splits the bandwidth over multiple hosts and multiple locations, and can't be shut down very easily. We're talking something Morpheus-like.
You need to do this server switching without obvious glitches and you need some way to distribute to the servers...
You can't argue with choice. Being able to hookup to radio streams from all around the world beats K00L FM any day-- and I spend 10+ hours a day at my computer.
But you immediatly have a problem which traditional radio, even with a huge network of transmitters, dosn't have. That is the music publishing industry wants the ability licence by geography. Unless you play music from outside the mainstream or have a non music format, e.g. news, talkshows, etc. Also if you want to carry adverts either you can only advertise the comparativly few globally available products and services. Or work out a way to identify where the listener is and insert appropriate local ads.
Or, on the other hand... Copyright has been a dead issue for a very long time for the music of Beethoven and Bach. There just is none. The rights expired a LONG time ago. The last time I saw Bach played live, I read that ticket sales cover something like 75% of the cost of the performance, with sponsors and donors picking up the rest. I could be jumping to conclusions here, but what if there's a correlation between the absence of copyright protection and the business model you see in classical music?
You could still create a copyrighted CD of the performance of a classical piece. One point about classical music is that only the high quality end still gets performed...
It would be nice if the big players got together and told MS there mad as hell and won't take it anymore.
That would probably involve forming some kind of pricing cartel. Which is just as illegal as the things Microsoft is up to. Problem is when the law isn't enforced breaking the law can end up the only option...
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.
Most likely because either it says that Gateway can't do this in the (secret) agreement they made with Microsoft...
Coke is selling products in an industry with competition. MS is not. Coke cannot put a grocery store out of business, whereas MS could squash Dell like a bug if they cut off the "Windows air supply."
There is another difference a grocery store has a very broad base of products. Even if they were to stop selling carbonated soft drinks they would still have a viable busines. With many OEM's selling computers is a huge chunk, if all , of their business.
OEMs would be free to sell machines with other operating systems, or none at all. Consumers would be required to buy Windows separately and install it themselves should they prefer that to whatever non-Microsoft OS the OEM preinstalled. This would also halt the other trend that MS and the OEMs are promoting - a lack of recovery disks.
I think you'd see the following happen: Apple would immediately release an Intel version of OSX, since the business suddenly becomes interesting to them. RedHat, Mandrake, Lindows, and other as-yet unformed companies could raise the capital to make consumer friendly versions of their offerings.
Most likely you'd create a new customer service industry. Software installation and maintainance, for the home and other small user. This already exists to some extent...
Actually, my opinion is that Linux really shines in the case of a pre-configured, just-plug-it-in-and-it-works machine. And my nearly 80 year-old grandparents agree. I'd say that Linux is awesome for power users, a great choice for complete novices (assuming it's all installed and configured for them)
There are plenty of environments where a preconfigured system which "just works" and cannot easily be put into a state where it dosn't work are exactly what is required. You can't easily do this with Windows, nor can a large OEM really do this with any OS. It's something which is more applicable to the small retailer (so long as they arn't prevented from configuring machines they sell) or a corporate IT department.
and still a hard sell for the middle of the road users who want to be able to mess with hardware, install software they get at Best Buy, etc.
Which is something Windows (especially the versions with no effective separation between "user" and "administrator" tasks) appears almost designed for. But are these really the majority Windows advocates would like people to believe they are. Anyway people who bring this kind of behaviour into the workplace are a complete menace....
I tried to by a desktop-type system from Dell without an MS OS, and the salesman said that it was impossible. I found another much smaller company that was willing to do it and ordered my two computers from that company instead.
The reason is simply that the smaller supplier has to pay full price for each copy of Windows and they pay Microsoft only based on how many Windows licences they sell. The big OEM's get Windows a lot cheaper, but subject to the condition that they not only ship it with every machine they sell. In addition they have a whole set of other conditions about how they set it up, what they can and can't also supply with computers. Even though this was found to be illegal in the early 90's Microsoft continue to do it...
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, anyone can cobble together their own distribution. But would an end-user organization like Merrill Lynch want to?
Actually it would make sense for any large corporate to put together their own distribution. The chances of a commercially sold distribution exactly meeting their actual needs are remote. A commercial distribution is far more likely to attempt to be "jack of all trades". They could easily be faced with headaches about getting things they don't want or need out of a commercial distribution (e.g. Suse by default assumes that networking tools need ppp and ISDN support...)
If you grab sack and do the job right and take responsability for your own internal OS installation, building a linux server won't cost much money out-of-pocket.
It might make sense to use a distribution as a foundation. Depends if the cost of buying one is less than the time your staff would need to do things from scratch.
Many companies won't do this, and so they claim that linux isn't free, that you have to pay companies like RedHat and SuSE for their work, when in reality, they'd rather pay someone for their work than do it themselves. and then complain about why they had to pay someone else.
They are generally paying for someone elses labour.
Try to get a copy of Suse Linux for S/390. They charge for the distribution per CPU. Like $6000 per CPU.
Sure the software is free, but you still pay for the bundling and the distribution of the software, and there is no specification as to how or how much they charge for those services...
You can charge whatever you think people will pay. Which is a function of how much you think your customers will judge accepable. However the difference is that open source software is a freely available comodity. (With proprietary software there can be no competition.) Anyone can set up a business selling a software bundle and support for OSS. In the same way that anyone can set up a business selling bottled water or compressed air.
You have to look at what the end user needs to accomplish and see if there is a cohesive way, under Linux, to provide it reliably and effectively.
We used to call this kind of thing "systems analysis". Except that you'd start with fewer preconceptions...
If the users' only requirement is a term emulator, an e-mail client, and a spreadsheet app, can't that be handled under Linux six ways to Sunday?? Personally, I'm more inclined than ever before to try to go diskless on the desktop so that my IT plant has fewer moving parts and less replication cost.
Consider also that workstations are the parts of the system which get most wear and tear and are most prone to accidental or deliberate damage (even theft). So it makes sense to miminise the cost of workstations and to have things so spares can easily be swapped in...
In anything but the smallest companies, employees are prohibited with the threat of termination from installing software theirselves. Licensing and data security aside, it just destabilizes office politics. Everybody wants what is in the office next to theirs.
However often this is said a fair number of Slashdot posters just don't appear to "get it". Also the issues left aside, licencing, data security, stability and support, are in themselves very important and potentially very expensive issues.
In your scenero, it's much more likely that the employee fills out a "software needs" form, it gets signed off by the supervisor and possibly a finance guy, and then a help desk person installs it.
Assuming that the employee actually has a genuine reason for needing the software.
Now, here's where things get interesting. Despite MS's best efforts, generally a person has to be dispatched to the physical desktop.
Which has cost implications, either someone can't do any work whilst their machine is updated or you need a whole set of staff working outside normal working hours.
With any *nix, even if it *isn't* a matter of just setting something on the server, then you can use ftp and telnet to install everything, a process which can easily be scripted as well.
The former is often the more likely with a unix type system... Also what about the senario where the use of the program needs to follow the person rather than workstation or person@workstation? (Or even that user can use that program on any machine in a specific department but no acess outside that department.) This is far more difficult using Windows than it is with any kind of unix system.
In an enterprise situation, Linux is more than ready for the desktop.
In many relevent ways it has been more ready than Windows ever has been.
. Many many desktops out there sit running a specialized app tied to the corporate database, plus an email app. That's it.
Not always even the "plust and email app". Some of these systems even involve a DOS window maximised to fill the screen or even a terminal emulator. The problem is that quite a few places appear to have built specialised applications tried strongly to either Windows or MS Office and fear that attempting to untie them will be too costly. So they stick with the "devil they know" patching them to work with the latest version of Windows and/or Office.
With out anyone looking to see if this makes sense or is sustainable long term.
Purchasing managers are very much driven by the "one throat to choke" myth. They think that, if something is screwed up with commercial software, there's someone they can sue. This, despite the fact that nobody really has done so, because both the licenses and the law protect the vendors. Same goes with support. I've dealt with the major commercial vendors as well as developers of several OSS efforts, and I've had consistently better bug-fix turnaround with open-source.
Problem with "support" it appears to have the meanings of both evading responsibility for something going wrong and actually getting things fixed in they do go wrong. Open source support does the latter very well, but the former not at all. Proprietary software does the former very well and the latter to some extent or other.
Part of the problem is that software is seen as some kind of special "magic" thing. So the usual rules about having redundant supplies for goods and services arn't applied. Usually the purchaser is in a position of power, since they can go elsewhere. With proprietary software (and the support for it) the supplier is in the position of power, because their customer cannot simply go elsewhere. With open source the balance of power goes back to the purchaser...
And if you intentionally tricked people into using your technology without mentioning that little matter of a patent, then you can actually lose your patent.
Unfortunatly it's only "can", there dosn't appear a method for automatically depth charging such "submarine patents"...
I think there are lots of legal implications of open-source software that just haven't been thought out, or tested in court. It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which some previously unthought-of aspect of IP law renders the GPL invalid.
This would appear to be a far bigger risk with commercial software related licences. Especially ones which are considerably more complex or attempt to redefine copyright law (or in the case of EULAs contract law.)
About the only ways in which you could render the GPL invalid would either be to revoke copyright on software (all software is public domain) or revoke licencing of copyright works (if you want your work published you must put it into the public domain.)
The question of ownership is sticky - the owner of any particular bit of code might be difficult to determine and impossible to track down.
There are plenty of problems using proprietary code. Especially if you later discover that that the supplier didn't actually write most ofg the program. e.g. the "we licenced this from someone else, used a third party IDE to develop on, etc".
This has some bearing on her question about patent violations which is frankly quite legitimate. Consider a company that is using open source software and has made changes to it to meet internal requirements. Suppose then a software company comes along claiming infringement of patented methods in that software package - is the company using the software liable if the software is found to be infringing because in changing the source they have become authors of the software?
How could this senario occur without the software company concered enguaging in espionage and probably copyright infringement. If anyone modifies GPL code and only uses it internally then they don't need to licence it at all. The only way in which they could even see the code is by pirating it. Then the only way in which the software company could defend themselves against the charge of being a software pirate would be to place their works into the public domain.
It wasn't until we weighed it against the cost of redeveloping 120 applications for Linux that we decided to cave. MS knows this. They waited for companies to become dependant on their OS before jacking up the price.
Hardly an original idea. Also where do the figures for redeveloping the applications to be more portable come from? After all these can't be that old. Are these actually applications or macros and addons to Microsoft office? If the latter you could be in for a bumpy ride anyway.
Unnecessary complexity does not appeal to everyone.
Dosn't appear to be an issue with Windows where often the end user is expected to perform system administration tasks...
People aren't necessarily stupid just because they can't be bothered to learn complex new OS environments for negligible gain
Most end users never learn a "OS environment" in the first place.
Funny how these people happily ignore all the problems of closed source apps, isn't it? The security issues, the continual upgrade payments, the bloated system requirements, the worry of the company dying and support drying up. Not to mention the cost.
You'd have though the risk of tieing their business to the vendor would set alarm bells ringing. But too often it dosn't. Apparently they honest believe that some contracts (probably written by the vendor to favour the vendor) will protect them...
The most pathetic thing in the world is a prisoner what spends their time rationalising about how much better off they are than those poor saps that have to pay for rent and food outside.
An apt analogy.
Wonder how many of these "we arn't a computer company so we can rely on a vendor rather than employing some IT professionals" are prefectly happy to employ (or contract) lawyers even though they arn't lawfirms...
We get PCs from Dell, wipe them completely, and put our own disk images on them according to department (different departments, different needs).
Exactly the sort of thing the majority of corporate IT departments do. But still people like to claim that OEM installs even have a point.
The largest obstacle for office suites to overcome is file format compatibility. Star Office 6.0 beta completely destroys Word 2000 documents, and forget about Word importing Star Office documents. In order to overcome this a company would have to make a sweeping, blanket change in software policies so that everyone used the same productivity suite.
Just hope that Microsoft dosn't suddently require you to "upgrade" from 2000.
But then I can only imagine the numbers of people bringing illegal copies of Office from home and using that in order to avoid learning how to use different software. Most people in non-technical positions (order management, billing) have no concept of copyrights and audits. It's much safer for the company to buy a license for Office and not worry about it.
But that dosn't cover you for any other software your users might bring in from home or the time which might be involved sorting out the consequences of their vandalism.
In my view, it is a bit too late to speak of "features" and "prices" as an MS Office killer (of any version). Why? For years, corporate office (average Joe/Jane employee/consumer) users have gotten used to the "look-and-feel" of MS Office -- it is a tool that they have become so familiar with for better or worse.
:) Also nowhere outside computer GUI's would this argument be anything other than laughable.
You must be thinking of a different Microsoft Office. The one I am familiar with comes out with a different "look and feel" every 18-24 months
A lot of consumers beleive you get what you pay for. Most aren't going to spend $400 for a full copy of XP, but they see that in the store and when they buy a computer with OfficeXP SBE (a cheaper version) they think they really have something. "Why would anyone charge $400 for a product if it wasn't worth it?"
Sounds like the same sort of thing computer magazine cover disks do when they say "As sold for xyz". Which could just as easily mean "we tried to sell it for xyz, but no-one actually though it was worth that much".
If it has the features I need and use rather than the features MS thinks I need, then it's an Office Killer for me. It doesn't need all the features of OfficeXP - it just needs the features that I need, and shoulnd't crash or screw up my documents!
Is a comparison with Office XP meaningful. Office 2000, even 97 appears to have far greater usage.
As the DMCA is an American Law, what would happen if they distribute the servers over different nations and continents?
The US will lean on the rest of the world to pass similar laws in the name of "globalization" and "harmonization". They will also lean on their allies to do so out of "friendship". Against any militarily weak nation they could threaten military action. (The covert CIA kind, rather the the B52 bombers on CNN kind though.)
Although the majority of them seem to come from europe, etc, what are the ramifications as to the charges if they are not US-Based non-profit organizations/servers?
What probably matters is not if these organisations make a profit or not. But if there is a potential that they might reduce the profits of US "high^H^H^H^Hcorporate citizens".
I see some server-to-server bandwidth sharing ala p2p, as tonnes of individual servers maybe take 100 or so users. Splits the bandwidth over multiple hosts and multiple locations, and can't be shut down very easily. We're talking something Morpheus-like.
You need to do this server switching without obvious glitches and you need some way to distribute to the servers...
You can't argue with choice. Being able to hookup to radio streams from all around the world beats K00L FM any day-- and I spend 10+ hours a day at my computer.
But you immediatly have a problem which traditional radio, even with a huge network of transmitters, dosn't have. That is the music publishing industry wants the ability licence by geography. Unless you play music from outside the mainstream or have a non music format, e.g. news, talkshows, etc. Also if you want to carry adverts either you can only advertise the comparativly few globally available products and services. Or work out a way to identify where the listener is and insert appropriate local ads.
Or, on the other hand... Copyright has been a dead issue for a very long time for the music of Beethoven and Bach. There just is none. The rights expired a LONG time ago. The last time I saw Bach played live, I read that ticket sales cover something like 75% of the cost of the performance, with sponsors and donors picking up the rest. I could be jumping to conclusions here, but what if there's a correlation between the absence of copyright protection and the business model you see in classical music?
You could still create a copyrighted CD of the performance of a classical piece. One point about classical music is that only the high quality end still gets performed...
It would be nice if the big players got together and told MS there mad as hell and won't take it anymore.
That would probably involve forming some kind of pricing cartel. Which is just as illegal as the things Microsoft is up to.
Problem is when the law isn't enforced breaking the law can end up the only option...
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.
Most likely because either it says that Gateway can't do this in the (secret) agreement they made with Microsoft...
Coke is selling products in an industry with competition. MS is not. Coke cannot put a grocery store out of business, whereas MS could squash Dell like a bug if they cut off the "Windows air supply."
There is another difference a grocery store has a very broad base of products. Even if they were to stop selling carbonated soft drinks they would still have a viable busines. With many OEM's selling computers is a huge chunk, if all , of their business.
OEMs would be free to sell machines with other operating systems, or none at all. Consumers would be required to buy Windows separately and install it themselves should they prefer that to whatever non-Microsoft OS the OEM preinstalled. This would also halt the other trend that MS and the OEMs are promoting - a lack of recovery disks.
I think you'd see the following happen: Apple would immediately release an Intel version of OSX, since the business suddenly becomes interesting to them. RedHat, Mandrake, Lindows, and other as-yet unformed companies could raise the capital to make consumer friendly versions of their offerings.
Most likely you'd create a new customer service industry. Software installation and maintainance, for the home and other small user. This already exists to some extent...
Actually, my opinion is that Linux really shines in the case of a pre-configured, just-plug-it-in-and-it-works machine. And my nearly 80 year-old grandparents agree. I'd say that Linux is awesome for power users, a great choice for complete novices (assuming it's all installed and configured for them)
There are plenty of environments where a preconfigured system which "just works" and cannot easily be put into a state where it dosn't work are exactly what is required. You can't easily do this with Windows, nor can a large OEM really do this with any OS. It's something which is more applicable to the small retailer (so long as they arn't prevented from configuring machines they sell) or a corporate IT department.
and still a hard sell for the middle of the road users who want to be able to mess with hardware, install software they get at Best Buy, etc.
Which is something Windows (especially the versions with no effective separation between "user" and "administrator" tasks) appears almost designed for. But are these really the majority Windows advocates would like people to believe they are. Anyway people who bring this kind of behaviour into the workplace are a complete menace....
I tried to by a desktop-type system from Dell without an MS OS, and the salesman said that it was impossible. I found another much smaller company that was willing to do it and ordered my two computers from that company instead.
The reason is simply that the smaller supplier has to pay full price for each copy of Windows and they pay Microsoft only based on how many Windows licences they sell.
The big OEM's get Windows a lot cheaper, but subject to the condition that they not only ship it with every machine they sell. In addition they have a whole set of other conditions about how they set it up, what they can and can't also supply with computers.
Even though this was found to be illegal in the early 90's Microsoft continue to do it...