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Posted in Europe, FSF, GNU/Linux, Windows at 3:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Peter Brown from the FSF (Free Software Foundation) argues that PCs should not be saddled with Windows and that the EU Commission should therefore take a look at the problem
April’s latest complaint about the Microsoft deal with the EU (there are many more complaints about it [1, 2, 3, 4]) has inspired the FSF’s big gun, Peter Brown, to write this post. In part, it says:
=> latest complaint about the Microsoft deal with the EU | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ↺ this post
Thanks to the European Commission’s antitrust like activities, European citizens will soon be presented with a ballot choice between twelve browsers when first using a newly purchased computer preloaded with the Microsoft Windows operating system.But is this really progress? It’s not much of a choice when you have to give up your freedom first in order to select a browser — a few of which might be free software. Why not give citizens the option of purchasing the computer with a free software operating system like GNU/Linux, or with no operating system at all? The best way to fight monopoly isn’t to give more choices after the most basic premise of the monopoly has already been agreed to — it’s to let people opt out of the monopoly from the beginning.
Thousands of Italians are preparing to sue Microsoft over bundling, as reported earlier this week. We wrote about this on Wednesday and added many more references yesterday. Marcel Gagné, a Canadian, has just written about the notorious “Microsoft tax” as well:
=> on Wednesday | added many more references yesterday | ↺ has just written
As I mentioned, that’s a lot of computing power for a small price tag. Even at the ‘sale price’, I’m betting that Best Buy made money and Acer made money and other people down the line made money. Add to that Windows 7 Premium Home edition which, according to my local Future Shop, is $225 Canadian for a full version or $130 for an upgrade. We Linux and FOSS people call this the Microsoft tax. There were also a bunch of other pieces of software installed, some full versions and others time-limited trials. I don’t really care, I wasn’t going to run any of it anyhow. Assuming that this story is correct in saying that NewEgg offers OEM versions of Windows 7 for $110, then my notebook could have goes a full hundred dollars less, at the very least. So now, I could theoretically have gotten all this computing power for $500 or less. Just install Ubuntu or Kubuntu or any other version of Linux you prefer and you have a seriously inexpensive, seriously powerful, and infinitely more reliable machine than the Microsoft-taxed version can offer.
How much pressure will it take to end the illegal bundling? This was challenged very strongly in France and to an extent in Belgium too. We wrote about these issues before, under posts that include some of the ones below. █
Russia to Microsoft: Stop Forcing People to Buy WindowsNovell’s Bundling of Patent ‘Protection’ :: Analogies (Plus Videos)Microsoft’s Older Crimes Against Web Browsers Return, Microsoft’s New Attacks on JavaScript RevisitedCombating Unbundling: Patent Troll Fights to Enforce ”Windows/Patent Tax”
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