begin quoting Todd Walton as of Fri, May 06, 2005 at 08:00:31AM -0700:
On 5/5/05, DJA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In practical economic terms Microsoft /is/ a monopoly in the operating system market. In that market Linux is still little more than a Glob Fly.
Well, "monopoly" usually means something more than just successful.
Yes.
It usually implies some kind of extra-market wrong-doing.
Wikipedia sez: -- In economics, a monopoly (from the Greek monos, one
+ polein, to sell) is defined as a persistent market situation where
there is only one provider of a kind of product or service. Monopolies
are characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or
service that they provide, a lack of viable substitute goods, as well
as high barriers to entry for potential competitors on the market.
I spent a few moments reading verious definitions, and I didn't find any that implied some kind of extra-market wrong-doing.
When we discuss the ramifications of monopolies, we eventually end up there, but I don't think it's useful to extend the term to automatically include the presumption of wrong-doing. Otherwise, we need to think of another term to describe an exclusive seller that is not engaged in some sort of wrong-doing.
-Stewart "See how I avoided discussing Copyright? ... Ack! Darn." Stremler
That's because we tend to roll up the whole history of a monopoly into one big burrito. That includes making the motivation and method used by a company to eventually become a monopoly as part of the definition of monopoly.
Of course what we are really talking about is one company's (in this case Micro$oft's) /implementation/ of a monopoly - including the processes, methods and means it used to get there. Kind of like making a case study the definition.
So, there's your researched (but rather sterile) definition of monopoly, and then there's us geeks' corrupted (but more humanistic and certainly more entertaining) definition.
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
-- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
