[svlug] brain fart: proposal to the DOJ

[George Bonser]

On Tue, 10 Nov 1998, Bevan Schroeder wrote:

> PROS:
> Competition and improvements will abound.
> OSS developers will finish Wine overnight.  Their husbands, wives, and
>   children will be overjoyed.
> CONS:
> Microsoft will not be a smouldering heap of wood and plaster.  ;)

One thing that could be done is eliminate bundling of an OS with a PC. The
OS should be a separate line-item on the invoice and the customer could
choose to buy no OS or a different OS and have that line-item and its
cost removed or modified. Also, the price for the bundled OS must be
within 90% of the cost of the shelf price of the OS if bought "off the
shelf". If a vendor wanted to have a sale on Win98, they could but it
would go for bundled and unbundled versions.

People would complain more if they actually PAID for the operating system
and had problems with it. Alternatives like OS/2 would then be more
popular as they are in Europe where bundling is prohibited. This also
prevents every PC sale from being marked as a Windows sale just because
the computer came from the factory with it. If you buy a PC, reformat the
drives and download Linux, your PC counted in the statistics as a
Windows98 sale even though you never booted Win98 and no figure for the
linux installation gets recorded.


George Bonser

The Linux "We're never going out of business" sale at an FTP site near you!


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