begin quoting Andrew Lentvorski as of Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 04:59:00PM -0800: > Todd Walton wrote: > >Not to beat the drum or anything, but "Microsoft is a monopoly". > >Haven't you heard? > > Yes, they are. When the only thing which can compete against someone is > something which must be *given away* and even then will only dislodge it > *slowly*, that pretty much defines an entrenched monopoly. > > And, by the way, OpenOffice has only been a viable alternative in the > last year. Until then, it didn't cut it. Especially on the PowerPoint > clone.
StarOffice was a good enough MSWord and MSExcel clone to be useful. The presentation tool was good enough to create basic presentations, but it couldn't do some of the stuff that PowerPoint did to make it as a replacement. The Draw tool is pretty darn good -- although there's room for improvement. (I haven't yet found a way to anchor a connector to the midpoint of another connector, and I have heard about, but can't find, a set of UML templates.) I've not tried out the presentation tool yet. > However, you assume that Microsoft's sin is that it is a monopoly. > Monopolies don't automatically provoke the reaction that Microsoft does. > > It is the fact that Microsoft uses its monopoly to then engage in > anti-competitive behavior that is the big crime. See their behavior in > Massachusetts vs. open standards. > > Only a monopolist could get away with what they pulled. Any other > vendor that tried to pull that would get dropped from state contract > bidding altogether. Yup! -- _ |\_ \| -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
