Max Hyre wrote:
Dear Debianistas:
John Hasler wrote:
The manufacturer may be paying Microsoft a fixed fee for
every machine he ships rather than for every copy of
Microsoft Windows he ships. This makes sense when nearly
every machine has Microsoft Windows installed.
Precisely. But the sense is inverted. Nearly every
machine has a copy of MS Windows installed because the
manufacturer pays a fixed fee for every machine shipped.
When this whole thing started to snowball (as in when MS
had gotten a solid foothold by selling MS-DOS for lots less
than the P-system or CP/M-86) MS made an offer no one in
her right mind could refuse. Their per-hardware-unit-sold
license was so much cheaper than the per-OS-copy-sold
license that it made no sense to do anything else. Thus,
any system sent out already had the cost of MS-DOS (later MS
Windows) built into its price. Hence, remarks about the
``Microsoft Tax''.
Once this happens, adding any other OS, no matter what
(>= 0) its price, means more effort for the manufacturer.
It raises the cost of the sale, and Linux is frozen out by
economics.
Q.E.D.
I see you didn't pay much attention to the Comes vs Microsoft trial.
The plaintiffs had a former CEO from one of largest OEM's in Europe
testify as to how MS operated. They required the OEM to pay MS whether
or not they installed a MS OS on a system they sold. It's called the
per-processor license and that's what MS used to run DR-DOS out of the
business.
If an OEM wouldn't agree to a per-processor license then MS doubled or
tripled price of their OS even if the OEM sold the same number of PC's
with a MS OS installed. Thus it wasn't a licensing scheme that was
advantageous to the OEM's, it was a licensing scheme they either had to
accept or get out of the business. It was a gun to the head of the
OEM's, and MS agreements with the OEM's still are.
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