Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 17:59:29 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org (Jonathon McKitrick) Cc: jack@germanium.xtalwind.net, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit" Message-ID: <199911181759.KAA16140@usr02.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.02A.9911181516420.1354-100000@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> from "Jonathon McKitrick" at Nov 18, 99 03:17:33 pm
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> >> Is it possible for company to cause the adoption of lesser > >> technology purely by business/marketing tactics? > > > >Yes. OS/2 2.1 was superior to Windows3.1/DOS. The "Windows > >tax", where OEMs were forced to license a copy of W3.1 for every > >system sold or pay full retail, didn't leave much room for OS/2. > > Couldn't it be argued that those OEM's had the option to choose? Maybe > what happened is that *they* chose windows, not consumers, and now we get > the consequences. They were not permitted to divide the OS that came preinstalled on their hardware on the basis of OS marketshare. They were given a binary option on the basis of monopoly: they either paid for Windows to be installed everywhere, or they installed Windows nowhere. There was similar wrangling over the Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 transition, since the OEM contracts for Windows 3.1 did not specify a time boundary on options to renew, but the Windows 95 contracts did. This gave Microsoft leverage to force the issue of Windows 3.1 deprecation, when otherwise market forces might have caused Windows 3.1 systems to continue shipping forever, given that it was "good enough" for many veritcal markets. In fact, even today, you can purchase Windows 3.1 from some PC vendors whose primary market always has been linked to a vertical market where Windows 3.1 is "good enough". The back pages of "Computer Shopper" are littered with these people, just as OS/2 still has a huge following in the retail Point Of Sale Terminal (POST) market. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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