> define ethical? if your saying that I can insure that I can get my
> operating system to be included with every PC by making a deal with
> vendors.. I think I would... is that unethical?
ethical == not doing a hack to win 3.11 so it doesn't run on DR-DOS as
well as not coercing pc manufacturer to licence MS-DOS to be able to buy
windows,and for doing deal with PC manufacturer,you could deal
fairly,i.e.if the manufacturer wanted to have 10% of his PC line running
on OS/2,he has the right to do so.
might include some background:
you see,at the time,there where lot of application available for
windows so MS could have a very good following,MS also had (and still
have) a very good relation with independant developpers,the company
could have stood on it own without any illegal tactic and still enjoy a
very good market but they decided otherwise,with the amount of
development and research there,they could have stiffled a lot of
innovation (with the profit that come with it) but they choose not to
obey the 80/20 rule which mean in this case 80% of the market for 20% of
the effort,instead they choose to get the remaining 20% for 80% of the
effort (by 100%,i mean the windows users community,not the entire
computer users community).
on IBM's case (i need to talk about this since IBM's OS/2 was
competition for windows),OS/2 could have been good competition for
windows but marketing wasn't IBM strong point so there where not many
users and thus,not many developpers so it didn't make it really well on
the computer users market and it was (unfortunately) not a real threat
for Microsoft.
Alain Toussaint
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[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
