Re: Exclusive OEM deals, still???

[Christopher Pall <christopher.pall@wmich.edu>]

Oh Microsoft doesn't give a rats a** what was in that consent thingy. I personally know a VP of a large engineering firm that was going to get those
nice discounted Dell machines if and only if they were replacing UNIX boxed - in other words, if we aren't huring the competition, we can't afford to
sell the machine.

There will be no resolution to the monopoly until Microsoft's contract control is broken.


John N Bryan wrote:
> 
> This was posted to Slashdot, http://www.slashdot.org, yesterday or
> today, ( I didn't look at the date ).  I thought this was officially
> proscribed already.  Is it going on less visibly, maybe not on paper???
> 
> "I work at a company which uses Linux all over the place and we buy nothing
> but DELL machines. In the past we've asked them time and time again to
> install some sort of Linux on the machines (They come with 98 or NT). After
> getting their reps to come to our company and sit down with us and talk
> about things, it turns out that Dell *HAS* to sell a Microsoft operating
> system with every computer that they ship. It's part of a deal they made
> with Microsoft. They said that if we ordered 50 machines within a year they
> would do whatever it took to keep our business (which *WOULD* include
> pre-installing Linux on the machines), but the rep added that they would
> eat the cost of the NT license which they would buy from Microsoft for each
> machine in order to keep their deal with Microsoft valid. This was
> acceptable to us, but we still thought that the idea of Microsoft still
> getting a license fee when we were buying a machine with absolutely no
> Microsoft software on it was just absurd."
> 
> -JNB
> -John Bryan
> johnb@austin.rr.com
> http://home.austin.rr.com/johnb/