Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 01:17:58 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Anthony Atkielski <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> Cc: FreeBSD Advocacy <freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: FreeBSD on the desktop (was: TheRegister article on Hotmail) Message-ID: <3DDF47C6.88FE04BF@mindspring.com> References: <20021121161453.GA69019_submonkey.net@ns.sol.net> <008501c2917a$ac643080$0a00000a_atkielski.com@ns.sol.net> <200211221502.gAMF2a6a089963@catflap.bishopston.net> <20021122234047.GB60785@wantadilla.lemis.com> <014201c29296$f9cc4a20$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <20021123071534.GC39240@wantadilla.lemis.com> <01e101c292c8$1aa8cda0$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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Anthony Atkielski wrote: > > Too often, Microsoft comes across like a child's > > toy: brightly coloured and weak on functionality. > > That's what the market wants. Given that Microsoft is a monopoly, how can you tell the difference between "what the market wants" and "what the market is forced to use by virtue of an illegal leveraging of monopoly powers"? Just because the primary focus of the Antitrust decision that recognized the Microsoft monopoly was their leveraging of their OS to force competing broswer vendors out of business doesn't mean that they haven't used that same leverage against vendors of other applications. Most Windows boxes come with Outlook Express [leveraging the monopoly to extinguish competing mail clients, such as ZMail] and Microsoft Word [leveraging the monopoly to extinguish competing word processors, such as Word Perfect] and Microsoft Peer-to-peer Networking [leveraging the monopoly to extinguish competing peer-to-peer networking, such as LANtastic] and Microsoft Client networking [leveraging the monopoly to extinguish competing client/server networking, such as Novell NetWare]. In all these cases, Microsoft has driven competitors out of business with "free" software, whise actual costs were borne by the 80% profit margin on Windows, which they could charge that much for, due to their OS monopoly. IMO, ZMail kicks Outlook's butt, but you are never going to see it any more, despite it's higher quality, not because it's not what the market wants, but because Outlook Express is illegally bundeled in the Windows pricing, instead of priced seperately. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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