> If in order to run Ubuntu my mother has to buy Windows, then the present bug will take decades to be fixed...
Exactly! If we allow M$ to have the luxury of charging us even for licenses that actually never get used (which their own EULA clearly states as a completely valid reason to get a refund, but you get a pretty good idea about their dirty business practices if you try), then it's absolutely impossible to ever starve them! That's why we should at least try to do whatever we can to either completely kill or severely restrict currently employed bundling practices. I've said before I'm fairly confident that once this obstacle is out of the way, we will all be able to notice a significantly higher adoption rates. At that point, all the hardware and software support problems we're having right now will start to diminish, because nobody of the so called "independent" hardware and software vendors can afford to ignore any system that has reached critical mass. Based on the observation of the current status quo, this means only about 10% of the overall market share, which really isn't that much. Have a look at Apple, that's already enjoying pretty much the kind of treatment usually reserved for the first class citizen. We can probably get there pretty soon, because as you see, right now even people who already know about GNU/Linux and could do with just fine don't have much choice. Forget that they can still assemble their own machines - we all know that the vast majority of people don't do that not to mention it's almost impossible with notebooks (let alone increasingly popular netbooks and nettops). Just do the math - if only one of every 10 guys buying a new PC decides to run something other than Winblow$, then M$'s stranglehold over the whole ICT industry is in serious trouble. Everyone has to have the opportunity to get whatever machine he likes and run whatever code he sees fit without first being forced to pay for any software that somebody decided to bundle with it without even the courtesy of asking. We really need to do something about this, because it's most likely the biggest problem we have right now. We can deal with bugs and missing features. Granted - there are things that will probably never work anywhere other than Winblow$, but that's not our fault. But if even people who actually won't use their crap have to pay M$ anyway, making sure they won't even notice they just lost another customer, then we're getting nowhere! -- Microsoft has a majority market share https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is a direct subscriber. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
