Re: OT: Two ways Microsoft sabotages Linux desktop adoption

Mike McCarty:
Please state what, exactly, is this "coerce" that MicroSoft has
done.

Tim:
Isn't that the cases where Microsoft has done things like:

If you want the information you need to make your device Windows
compliant/compatible, you have to agree to our terms. The same tricks
they'd did with ISPs about if you want "help" in some way, you have to
agree not to support non-Microsoft products.

If you want the right to say Windows compatible (or the rights to use
similar logo stamps of aproval on the box, etc.), the same sort of
thing.

Mike McCarty:
Please point out where the coercion is. I still don't see any.
More specifically, where are the "force, law, authority, or
fear"?

What part of the big bully boy saying, "that if you want to do business
with us you have to do it our way," don't you see as intimidation?

If they don't buckle, they only get to sell products that don't have the
various Windows badges of honour that makes it easy to sell your
product. i.e. You go from potential mass market to tiny market. Stores
aren't going to stock allegedly "unsupported/unsupportable" products.


Oh, so MicroSoft has done such a good job of porting its software
to many different hardware platforms, that it is difficult for
others to do as well? MicroSoft has risked so much capital
in purchasing the documentation on how to use some proprietary
hardware that others who are unwilling to do so have a problem
competing?

Have they really? What other than bog-standard PCs do you see Microsoft
Windows running on? And with the huge profits they have, and the almost

I thought I regularly see lists of hardware which "Linux supporters"
should avoid, because the h/w i/f is proprietary, and so the
driver writers for Linux can't/wont get the info necessary to support
the new video chips etc. because they can't/wont afford the price
it takes to buy the docs. Yet Win.. runs on everything I've seen.
To put it another way, what PCs do you NOT see Win.. running on?
I don't see mail echoes where a FAQ is "Does Win.. support this
or that laptop or whatever" whereas I *do* see this for Linux.

That's not Microsoft porting to things, that's things being designed to
work with Windows. The opposite direction. That's done by
manufacturers paying through the nose for the details from Microsoft
about how to be compatible with it.

Nvidia, ESS, S3, et al, don't have to buy documents to find out how to
make their hardware work on Linux, but they don't. They'd like, if they
cared, for other OS system developers to pay for details for their
products, but no free system's going to be in a position to do that.

Windows-compatible product development: Hardware manufacturer pays for
Windows information from Microsoft.

Linux-compatible product development: Expects someone else to buy
information from them, or sort it out by themselves, but doesn't want
outsiders knowing how their devices work.

complete monopoly they have of the market, how much of a "risk" are they
really taking to expand their market even further?

They *purchase* information. Why doesn't the "Open Software Community"
make the same purchase?

Mass market vendors with oodles of cash can do such things. Smaller
ones find it hard, particularly when not selling products. And why
should the OSS community foot the bill? Microsoft doesn't write the
Windows drivers for your video card, sound card, network card, video
capture card, flat bed scanner...

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