"With Linux users it's a total breeze to maintain once you get it set up (especially so w/ NIS or LDAP to bind it all together)"
You mean that in your environment it is not a problem that *every* single user on the network can fake *any* other and thus trivially gain access to their private data (including corporate-sensible one). Well, I think the article was about security compliance worriness, clearly a field not of your interest.
"So I guess I'd conclude that this product might be highly relevant to development shops and server managers, but much less relevant for determining what's running on the desktops of firms outside the IT industry."
Which results being quite to the point since the only people worried about the open source viral effect FUD are... development shops. A "pure" user of software has absolutly nothing to worry about using open source while the FUD goes mainly towards "whatifs" like "what if one of your lazy developers copy a function from a GPLed product and all of a sudden all your IP must go GPL?" (of course that's just FUD, but a FUD that somehow seems to work over too many people).
"It imposes no restrictions whatsoever on installation or use, and explicitly states that it does not bind end-users in any way."
*Except* that it's a license, not a contract. On a contract, you could crossbar all clauses you don't want, retain #9 and then get to use the software (if both parts still sign the contract which by the very contents of the #9 clause is guaranteed). But this is a license: you take it or leave it at a whole. So by pressing the "I do not accept" button you are rejecting even the #9 clause and you are limited to whatever rigths IP laws grant to you (noone, that is). On this circumnstances, #9 is "only" a declaration of intentions: "if you use the software after rejecting the GPL you are on illegal grounds, but hereby I declare I won't sue you for this", not that it makes so much practical difference, but it's still a difference.
"I have to disagree with you there. The installer for many windows versions of OSS software have a clickwrap style page where you have to agree to the conditions of the GPL before you can install the software. As you said, the GPL (and others) only apply when you want to distribute the code. You shouldn't have to "accept" the GPL to merely use the software. At least that's how I understand it."
Well, I understand your misunderstanding, but it's still a misunderstanding. What people usually means when saying that GPL only "triggers off" when redistributing, is that GPL on *limits* you regarding redistribution; it imposes no limits about usage. But it still is in fact an EULA, albeit an implicit one, as clearly demonstrates your example: You use a Windows installer for a GPL app that shows you the license on a clickwrap window. Then you can either accept, and then you can use the software in any way you see fit and you can redistribute under some conditions, or you can reject it... and then you are subjected to "default" copyright law. But under "default" copyright law you are forbidden to use any third party copyrighted IP without consent, and by rejecting the GPL you already rejected said usage consent, don't you?
Of course it is "marketing hype", but isn't everything corporate-related "marketing hype"?
If I wanted to find 200 "different" open source applications, I already know what would I do. Humm... Firefox 1.0.9, then Firefox 1.8.0, Firefox 2.0.0, that makes three... What? Are you telling me that's unfair? No it isn't. You certainly would put Windows XP and Windows Vista on different accounts and certainly AutoDesk would count differently your AutoCAD 2000 and 2005 licenses so I do the same on the open source camp; the fact you are not paying licenses for them doesn't make a different "product-wise" does it?
"I do not think that most of the people cheerleading for FOSS appreciate this. They just know that $DISTRO is neat, so obviously everyone who doesn't agree that it's perfect for a 10,000 seat enterprise network must be an "idiot." Le sigh!"
I agree with you about this is a "bussiness case", not a technical one. But I can't agree with your (implicit) view that the one you outlined is the only way to "make bussiness" (from the user side) in the IT field.
I won't go into the fact that Ubuntu *already* support encrypted home directories out of the install CD (well, I don't know for sure; I do know Debian "Etch", current stable, has this feature, so I assume that Ubuntu, coming from more "modern" Debian versions will have it too) since I see your point beyond your example.
What I can't grasp is that if you really are deploying for a 10.000 seat enterprise you are willing to be at the mercy of "probably one of the big vendors will be around to sell it to them, along with a consultant to walk the Remedy monkeys through troubleshooting it". When you have a 10.000 seat enterprise it's *you* the one on the driving seat. It is *you* the one that says your partners what to do, when and how, not "the other party". Current bussiness practices on the IT field goes -even for 10.000 seat enterprises, only too much about "some big buddy on the company wants X; then let's go to the market, see what does exist and beg it will fit our company needs" instead of "I'm a 10.000 seat gorilla, so I "own" my dozen pet IT companies that will kill themselves upon my saying". The truth is, specially big companies, can *guarantee* to themselves way better support going the open source route than current standards about "big names" if they can change the way they approach the bussiness. Hopefully some corporate managers are already seeing this truth.
Do you call an operative system that makes the gross number of servers exposed to the Internet a "dwarf minority"?
Anyway, that's because whatever. And whatever is the case, it is a *fact*: I've been directly connected to the Internet for more than six years without any direct malware effect (and I say "direct" because I *do* suffer indirect damages in the form of spam: it doesn't get into my inbox so much, but it does take a lot of CPU cycles), so it's doable. You want to say it's because I'm in the dwarf minority? So be it. Nothing refrains you to be in the "dwarf minority" in order to be free of malware for more than six long years. So don't say it's undoable.
"For a corporate environment, yes prevent the user from running any software that isn't installed"
You mean Microsoft Office cannot be used on a corporate environment, do you? I knew about malware exploiting due to Microsoft Office usage, so you either don't use Microsoft Office or you are exposed to malware.
"Basically, it comes down to either being vulnerable to malware, or not letting the computer do what the user tells it to."
Basically, I've using my computer in whatever way I saw fit, with no antivirus, for more than six years with no direct malware sufferings. On a side note, that's exactly the same time span that I didn't use any Microsoft product.
"I haven't seen any application ever create a WINNT directory which it didn't exist, nor a c:\windows directory when it didn't exist."
Still I've seen quite a lot creating a "C:\Program Files" on international versions of all kinds of Microsoft operative systems, from Windows 95 onwards.
"Vista will now force this issue"
You surely don't mean that Windows 2003 or Windows XP, you know, two products you still can buy from the very same vendor don't have this feature and are *gasp* DIFFERENT, do you?
"How many variations of Win2000 are there though?"
I think you meant *Microsoft* Windows 2000, didn't you? Well, for a starter, you have Microsoft Windows 2000 Workstation and Server, and then there is the Advanced or Datacenter Server. And there it comes Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, and Professional, and Media Center; and Windows 2003 in serveral incarnations as well as Microsoft Windows "Vista", with multiple market segregations too.
On the other hand I bet there are no less variations of Microsoft Windows 2000 than there are of Debian "Sarge".
So Debian "Sarge" is different to Red Hat Advanced Linux? So it is Microsoft Windows 2000 compared to Apple Mac OS/X.
"Still saying there's a different meter?"
It's you the one comparing apples to oranges. First you compare a product with himself (duh!). Then you fail to tell me if there are so many more differences between Debian GNU/Linux "Sarge" and RHEL4 than there are between Windows "Vista" and Windows XP (you know two *concurring* products from the very same vendor -Microsoft, that is). In the end you want to magnify diffences on one side and diminish differences in the other so, yes, *you* are using a different meter.
"I'm not entirely convinced that open source is less expensive than closed source"
It doesn't have to. Open Source is about power and suitability, not price. That being said, it's usually up to you having a cheaper solution (maybe less powerful) or expend more or less the same but end having a more suitable, powerful and flexible environment, or even paying more so you can have the environment exactly as you know you need it instead of being the way your vendor imposed upon you.
"I'm especially skeptical about your implication that close source software requires MORE developers than open source developers."
That's not an implication; that's plain obvious. Developing closed source means you have to develop the whole lot. Developing open source means you can reuse. Of course this doesn't mean you *must* share code, but that you *can*. So in the worse case scenario going open source means people have to develop not more than in closed source, usually less, and consistently less as time goes by (so the ammount of reusable code grows).
"but there are service costs, costs associated with understanding how to use the software, etc."
Which in the general case are just the same going with open or closed source. Or is it that somehow magically you don't have service and learning costs if you happen to use Oracle or Exchange instead of Postgres or Postfix/Cyrus/OpenLDAP?
"I think that the biggest benefit to open source software is that you can change it"
Yes. For the most part costs will be roughly the same. *Except* you still to pay for licenses if you go with closed source (at a price in direct proportion of the iron hand your provider manages to have on the market); *except* you still are bound to whatever the provider decided was good to you, instead of being you the one in control. *Except* that you are still bound to the upgrade mill you provider wants to impose over you.
"I think that's the MOST comforting thing about OSS. Problem is, that's a very technical benefit that the MBAs may not understand."
I think failing to transmit the advantages of open source to management is our own sin. Management *does* understand operation risks and *does* understand risk assesment derived from being dependent on a single provider as *does* understand the problems associated with your company goals being tied to those of a foreign party. You don't even need to mention any technicality even once to make crystal clear to your management what are the advantages and risk coverances about going open source.
"Such tools that people want to rely on, oh I don't know, all the time, require good management tools in order to set things up in a straightforward way that can be documented and can be reproduced"
Like, uh... a script? I had always problems trying to understand the rationale of "documented an reproductible" and "GUI" in the same sentence. Can you really talk about "can be documented and can be reproduced" on bold face when all you have is a doc document an some screen captures? Can you really talk about "can be documented and can be reproduced" when something suddenly starts to fail and you don't have the slightest idea about what was changed from yesterday?
"Do you really think editing a bloody XML file is a good idea?"
Not at all. But the ability to diff it to yesterday's version to see what changed it is. As it is running an script from cron instead of waiting for somebody to click on a GUI's box. As it is to have an scripted deployment environment you can guarantee repeatability with instead of depending on the read abilities of a sysop going through a doc with screen captures.
"Also, in my experience software with GUIs is also often missing a decent commandline interface - GUIs are all very well but once you have learnt to use a commandline interface then it is (a) much faster to use and (b) usable over a low bandwidth network connection"
Even this is of lessen importance to me. To me, the *real* problem with GUIs is that they lack three most important characteristics for any corporate environment: traceability, repeatability and (arguabily related) self-documentation. I can take any day, say/etc/hosts, and immediatly see what changed from yesterday's situation and usually, who and why did the change. Regarding scripts, once they are polished, I know I can reach exactly the same results one time or one hundred. You just can get this with point-n-click interfaces.
"let's use a car analogy. Assume you know nothing about cars and the respective market."
OK, let's use it. The fact is most people really know almost nothing about cars, and the fact is that there *are* many car brands. To add insult to pain, car companies have merged (a lot) and still they *insist* about having a lot of brands when they could easily merge brands along with companies and even save a real big hill of bucks.
Neither producers nor consumers fill that having so many car brands is hurting the market or disgusting consumers.
Now tell me please, what was your car analogy again?
In your "first amendment world" there couldn't be nothing like perjury: -Did you see this man killing the victim? -Yes, sir. -Then, how is it that this videotape record shows you one hundred miles away at that very moment? -Hummm... first amendment!
First amendement is about your right to talk about Intelligent Design, but has nothing to do neither about talking about it specifically on a Sience Class nor about making false or underclaimed assesments (I know science is wrong! Do you hold a PhD on the subject? No; Do you hold any degree on the subject? No; Do you have extensive reads on the subject so you know what are you exactly negating? Uh, no, no and no). On the other hand, it is not at high school where science is done (while rarely it might happen) but where science it taught. What is science and what is not is a matter for quite a different forum.
"Well, yeah....but everyone dies, though it's one-per-customer"
Can you please back that up with statistics? From experience not even 50% of humans ever die. Prove: more than half the people ever born never died (hey, if this works for theists -prove that God doesn't exists, it must work for me. After all I can back it up with *real* facts: I haven't been death not even once).;^D
Neither I said otherwise. Microsoft's strategy will be successfull in some cases, and will be a failure in others.
"And OEMs will be somewhat forced to carry only GPLv2 software as an alternative because they will be part of the deal which means they cannot distribute GPLv3 software."
Just like they were forced in the past not to show a multiboot menu but only a Microsoft OS? Maybe this time the antimonopoly laws will do a better job.
"Most cannot get around it because of some dependency"
Someones have already learnt what kind of long-run problems takes being in the hands of a convicted monopoly abuser like Microsoft and already *do* avoid such scenarios. Maybe others will follow that same path.
"I am suspecting Microsoft is planning to put out their own Linux distro"
That would be absolutly the stupidest thing Microsoft could do.
"I know I would do it"
I know you don't hold an almost 'de facto' standard on domestic computers and a *hughe* advantage on bussiness PC environments. If you did, you wouldn't see it such a good idea.
So you hold about 90% overall of the PC niche worldwide and you really want to make public that even you think there *is* an alternative? That you are no more the *only* way to go? That's equivalent to corporate suicide. If Microsoft were to spend say 100 millions a year on its own Linux distribution, such money would be much much better expended (from their point of view) on FUD marketing campaigns if anything else, al least while there's the slightest chance to succede with them.
Slashdot Mirror
"With Linux users it's a total breeze to maintain once you get it set up (especially so w/ NIS or LDAP to bind it all together)"
You mean that in your environment it is not a problem that *every* single user on the network can fake *any* other and thus trivially gain access to their private data (including corporate-sensible one). Well, I think the article was about security compliance worriness, clearly a field not of your interest.
"So I guess I'd conclude that this product might be highly relevant to development shops and server managers, but much less relevant for determining what's running on the desktops of firms outside the IT industry."
Which results being quite to the point since the only people worried about the open source viral effect FUD are... development shops. A "pure" user of software has absolutly nothing to worry about using open source while the FUD goes mainly towards "whatifs" like "what if one of your lazy developers copy a function from a GPLed product and all of a sudden all your IP must go GPL?" (of course that's just FUD, but a FUD that somehow seems to work over too many people).
"It imposes no restrictions whatsoever on installation or use, and explicitly states that it does not bind end-users in any way."
*Except* that it's a license, not a contract. On a contract, you could crossbar all clauses you don't want, retain #9 and then get to use the software (if both parts still sign the contract which by the very contents of the #9 clause is guaranteed). But this is a license: you take it or leave it at a whole. So by pressing the "I do not accept" button you are rejecting even the #9 clause and you are limited to whatever rigths IP laws grant to you (noone, that is). On this circumnstances, #9 is "only" a declaration of intentions: "if you use the software after rejecting the GPL you are on illegal grounds, but hereby I declare I won't sue you for this", not that it makes so much practical difference, but it's still a difference.
"I have to disagree with you there. The installer for many windows versions of OSS software have a clickwrap style page where you have to agree to the conditions of the GPL before you can install the software.
As you said, the GPL (and others) only apply when you want to distribute the code. You shouldn't have to "accept" the GPL to merely use the software. At least that's how I understand it."
Well, I understand your misunderstanding, but it's still a misunderstanding. What people usually means when saying that GPL only "triggers off" when redistributing, is that GPL on *limits* you regarding redistribution; it imposes no limits about usage. But it still is in fact an EULA, albeit an implicit one, as clearly demonstrates your example: You use a Windows installer for a GPL app that shows you the license on a clickwrap window. Then you can either accept, and then you can use the software in any way you see fit and you can redistribute under some conditions, or you can reject it... and then you are subjected to "default" copyright law. But under "default" copyright law you are forbidden to use any third party copyrighted IP without consent, and by rejecting the GPL you already rejected said usage consent, don't you?
"this sounds like marketing hype to me."
Of course it is "marketing hype", but isn't everything corporate-related "marketing hype"?
If I wanted to find 200 "different" open source applications, I already know what would I do. Humm... Firefox 1.0.9, then Firefox 1.8.0, Firefox 2.0.0, that makes three... What? Are you telling me that's unfair? No it isn't. You certainly would put Windows XP and Windows Vista on different accounts and certainly AutoDesk would count differently your AutoCAD 2000 and 2005 licenses so I do the same on the open source camp; the fact you are not paying licenses for them doesn't make a different "product-wise" does it?
"I do not think that most of the people cheerleading for FOSS appreciate this. They just know that $DISTRO is neat, so obviously everyone who doesn't agree that it's perfect for a 10,000 seat enterprise network must be an "idiot." Le sigh!"
I agree with you about this is a "bussiness case", not a technical one. But I can't agree with your (implicit) view that the one you outlined is the only way to "make bussiness" (from the user side) in the IT field.
I won't go into the fact that Ubuntu *already* support encrypted home directories out of the install CD (well, I don't know for sure; I do know Debian "Etch", current stable, has this feature, so I assume that Ubuntu, coming from more "modern" Debian versions will have it too) since I see your point beyond your example.
What I can't grasp is that if you really are deploying for a 10.000 seat enterprise you are willing to be at the mercy of "probably one of the big vendors will be around to sell it to them, along with a consultant to walk the Remedy monkeys through troubleshooting it". When you have a 10.000 seat enterprise it's *you* the one on the driving seat. It is *you* the one that says your partners what to do, when and how, not "the other party". Current bussiness practices on the IT field goes -even for 10.000 seat enterprises, only too much about "some big buddy on the company wants X; then let's go to the market, see what does exist and beg it will fit our company needs" instead of "I'm a 10.000 seat gorilla, so I "own" my dozen pet IT companies that will kill themselves upon my saying". The truth is, specially big companies, can *guarantee* to themselves way better support going the open source route than current standards about "big names" if they can change the way they approach the bussiness. Hopefully some corporate managers are already seeing this truth.
"Thats because you are a dwarf minority"
Do you call an operative system that makes the gross number of servers exposed to the Internet a "dwarf minority"?
Anyway, that's because whatever. And whatever is the case, it is a *fact*: I've been directly connected to the Internet for more than six years without any direct malware effect (and I say "direct" because I *do* suffer indirect damages in the form of spam: it doesn't get into my inbox so much, but it does take a lot of CPU cycles), so it's doable. You want to say it's because I'm in the dwarf minority? So be it. Nothing refrains you to be in the "dwarf minority" in order to be free of malware for more than six long years. So don't say it's undoable.
"For a corporate environment, yes prevent the user from running any software that isn't installed"
You mean Microsoft Office cannot be used on a corporate environment, do you? I knew about malware exploiting due to Microsoft Office usage, so you either don't use Microsoft Office or you are exposed to malware.
"Basically, it comes down to either being vulnerable to malware, or not letting the computer do what the user tells it to."
Basically, I've using my computer in whatever way I saw fit, with no antivirus, for more than six years with no direct malware sufferings. On a side note, that's exactly the same time span that I didn't use any Microsoft product.
Somehow, it seems it's possible.
"I haven't seen any application ever create a WINNT directory which it didn't exist, nor a c:\windows directory when it didn't exist."
Still I've seen quite a lot creating a "C:\Program Files" on international versions of all kinds of Microsoft operative systems, from Windows 95 onwards.
"Vista will now force this issue"
You surely don't mean that Windows 2003 or Windows XP, you know, two products you still can buy from the very same vendor don't have this feature and are *gasp* DIFFERENT, do you?
"How many variations of Win2000 are there though?"
I think you meant *Microsoft* Windows 2000, didn't you? Well, for a starter, you have Microsoft Windows 2000 Workstation and Server, and then there is the Advanced or Datacenter Server. And there it comes Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, and Professional, and Media Center; and Windows 2003 in serveral incarnations as well as Microsoft Windows "Vista", with multiple market segregations too.
On the other hand I bet there are no less variations of Microsoft Windows 2000 than there are of Debian "Sarge".
So Debian "Sarge" is different to Red Hat Advanced Linux? So it is Microsoft Windows 2000 compared to Apple Mac OS/X.
"Still saying there's a different meter?"
It's you the one comparing apples to oranges. First you compare a product with himself (duh!). Then you fail to tell me if there are so many more differences between Debian GNU/Linux "Sarge" and RHEL4 than there are between Windows "Vista" and Windows XP (you know two *concurring* products from the very same vendor -Microsoft, that is). In the end you want to magnify diffences on one side and diminish differences in the other so, yes, *you* are using a different meter.
"I'm not entirely convinced that open source is less expensive than closed source"
It doesn't have to. Open Source is about power and suitability, not price. That being said, it's usually up to you having a cheaper solution (maybe less powerful) or expend more or less the same but end having a more suitable, powerful and flexible environment, or even paying more so you can have the environment exactly as you know you need it instead of being the way your vendor imposed upon you.
"I'm especially skeptical about your implication that close source software requires MORE developers than open source developers."
That's not an implication; that's plain obvious. Developing closed source means you have to develop the whole lot. Developing open source means you can reuse. Of course this doesn't mean you *must* share code, but that you *can*. So in the worse case scenario going open source means people have to develop not more than in closed source, usually less, and consistently less as time goes by (so the ammount of reusable code grows).
"but there are service costs, costs associated with understanding how to use the software, etc."
Which in the general case are just the same going with open or closed source. Or is it that somehow magically you don't have service and learning costs if you happen to use Oracle or Exchange instead of Postgres or Postfix/Cyrus/OpenLDAP?
"I think that the biggest benefit to open source software is that you can change it"
Yes. For the most part costs will be roughly the same. *Except* you still to pay for licenses if you go with closed source (at a price in direct proportion of the iron hand your provider manages to have on the market); *except* you still are bound to whatever the provider decided was good to you, instead of being you the one in control. *Except* that you are still bound to the upgrade mill you provider wants to impose over you.
"I think that's the MOST comforting thing about OSS. Problem is, that's a very technical benefit that the MBAs may not understand."
I think failing to transmit the advantages of open source to management is our own sin. Management *does* understand operation risks and *does* understand risk assesment derived from being dependent on a single provider as *does* understand the problems associated with your company goals being tied to those of a foreign party. You don't even need to mention any technicality even once to make crystal clear to your management what are the advantages and risk coverances about going open source.
"Almost is not exactly though, is it? That DOES matter."
Yeah. But somehow, Window 95 being different to Windows NT 3.51, to Windows NT 4, to Windows 2000, to Windows 2003 doesn't seem to matter, does it?
Or is it that some people has a different mettering bar when it comes to Linux?
"Such tools that people want to rely on, oh I don't know, all the time, require good management tools in order to set things up in a straightforward way that can be documented and can be reproduced"
Like, uh... a script? I had always problems trying to understand the rationale of "documented an reproductible" and "GUI" in the same sentence. Can you really talk about "can be documented and can be reproduced" on bold face when all you have is a doc document an some screen captures? Can you really talk about "can be documented and can be reproduced" when something suddenly starts to fail and you don't have the slightest idea about what was changed from yesterday?
"Do you really think editing a bloody XML file is a good idea?"
Not at all. But the ability to diff it to yesterday's version to see what changed it is. As it is running an script from cron instead of waiting for somebody to click on a GUI's box. As it is to have an scripted deployment environment you can guarantee repeatability with instead of depending on the read abilities of a sysop going through a doc with screen captures.
"Also, in my experience software with GUIs is also often missing a decent commandline interface - GUIs are all very well but once you have learnt to use a commandline interface then it is (a) much faster to use and (b) usable over a low bandwidth network connection"
/etc/hosts, and immediatly see what changed from yesterday's situation and usually, who and why did the change. Regarding scripts, once they are polished, I know I can reach exactly the same results one time or one hundred. You just can get this with point-n-click interfaces.
Even this is of lessen importance to me. To me, the *real* problem with GUIs is that they lack three most important characteristics for any corporate environment: traceability, repeatability and (arguabily related) self-documentation. I can take any day, say
"let's use a car analogy. Assume you know nothing about cars and the respective market."
OK, let's use it. The fact is most people really know almost nothing about cars, and the fact is that there *are* many car brands. To add insult to pain, car companies have merged (a lot) and still they *insist* about having a lot of brands when they could easily merge brands along with companies and even save a real big hill of bucks.
Neither producers nor consumers fill that having so many car brands is hurting the market or disgusting consumers.
Now tell me please, what was your car analogy again?
"And in a 1st Amendment based society"
In your "first amendment world" there couldn't be nothing like perjury:
-Did you see this man killing the victim?
-Yes, sir.
-Then, how is it that this videotape record shows you one hundred miles away at that very moment?
-Hummm... first amendment!
First amendement is about your right to talk about Intelligent Design, but has nothing to do neither about talking about it specifically on a Sience Class nor about making false or underclaimed assesments (I know science is wrong! Do you hold a PhD on the subject? No; Do you hold any degree on the subject? No; Do you have extensive reads on the subject so you know what are you exactly negating? Uh, no, no and no). On the other hand, it is not at high school where science is done (while rarely it might happen) but where science it taught. What is science and what is not is a matter for quite a different forum.
Humm... I don't think dizzying means what you think it means...
ZIIIIUUUUUU
d'you heard this?
It's sarcasm passing right over your head.
"Well, yeah....but everyone dies, though it's one-per-customer"
;^D
Can you please back that up with statistics? From experience not even 50% of humans ever die. Prove: more than half the people ever born never died (hey, if this works for theists -prove that God doesn't exists, it must work for me. After all I can back it up with *real* facts: I haven't been death not even once).
"That depend on which point of view you see the acceleration from?"
/me ducks away
OK, you win: let's accelerate 1g the whole Universe instead of the vessel.
Better now?
"One very universal truth: the death rate is strictly 100%"
Hummm... another universal truth: death is quite a rare event. 6000 million people haven't dead even once!
"this isn't always possible or practice"
Neither I said otherwise. Microsoft's strategy will be successfull in some cases, and will be a failure in others.
"And OEMs will be somewhat forced to carry only GPLv2 software as an alternative because they will be part of the deal which means they cannot distribute GPLv3 software."
Just like they were forced in the past not to show a multiboot menu but only a Microsoft OS? Maybe this time the antimonopoly laws will do a better job.
"Most cannot get around it because of some dependency"
Someones have already learnt what kind of long-run problems takes being in the hands of a convicted monopoly abuser like Microsoft and already *do* avoid such scenarios. Maybe others will follow that same path.
"PC, in that context, means "Windows running machine""
Yeah, sure. Because everybody knows that Linux doesn't run on PCs... It runs in boxen!
"I am suspecting Microsoft is planning to put out their own Linux distro"
That would be absolutly the stupidest thing Microsoft could do.
"I know I would do it"
I know you don't hold an almost 'de facto' standard on domestic computers and a *hughe* advantage on bussiness PC environments. If you did, you wouldn't see it such a good idea.
So you hold about 90% overall of the PC niche worldwide and you really want to make public that even you think there *is* an alternative? That you are no more the *only* way to go? That's equivalent to corporate suicide. If Microsoft were to spend say 100 millions a year on its own Linux distribution, such money would be much much better expended (from their point of view) on FUD marketing campaigns if anything else, al least while there's the slightest chance to succede with them.