On Thu, 2006-04-06 at 00:22 +0200, Cor Nouws wrote: > > What do you all think about this? Mofia like tactics or just a healthy > > marketing push for more Windows boxen? > > You bet .. > > What I wonder more: why do (nearly) all computer vendors advertise "We > advice Windows XP Professional" > Free will? Or obliged when they want to sell MsWindows on the box??
There are partner arrangements that commit resellers to certain things like discounted prices if they effectively advertise and promise not to distribute other people's operating systems. Technically this is not illegal unless it was considered abuse of a monopoly position (which to me it seems to be) However to prove this you have to get evidence from another OS seller that it is preventing them getting into the market and that requires customers to back the complainant in the right way. The licensing is so complicated no ordinary people understand it so getting the right sort of evidence is difficult - especially since most small resellers are too terrified to stand up and be counted. (Does begin to sound more and more like the mafia ;-) ) I will state here and now that if someone wants a PC with no OS we will be happy to build it for them and install Linux free of charge. We just buy Windows from the main distribution channel so we have no deals with MS. Thing is we don't really want to get into selling individual machines to home users because they often need support they can't afford to pay for and we would then be in a difficult position of not being financially able to support them but not wanting to leave them in the lurch. Its better business for us to supply schools in largish quantities with sensible commercially viable support. But most have software they think they must have that only runs on Windows so at this stage its mainly a matter of trying to get OpenOffice.org and Mozilla in. In the end most small IT suppliers will be forced out of the market in England when the Gov puts out managed service contracts through the local authorities. It costs about £100k to bid for these contracts so no local small companies will ever afford to bid. Its one reason to shift our business away from hardware supply and support. Sun recently won one of these contracts for the City of Bradford so at least Star Office will get deployed extensively there. The difficulty with large contracts though is that it will make it even more difficult to change as the inertia will increase with larger dependent groupings. -- Ian Lynch www.theINGOTs.org www.opendocumentfellowship.org www.schoolforge.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
