[Am-info] Gateway Official Hits Microsoft Licensing In Testimony

[Geoffrey]

I think I've seen a number of valid points here.  With IBM moving 
heavily into the Linux realm, I can't understand why they don't put some 
weight ($$) behind OS/2.  Here is what I think would be the ideal 
solution, although it's not enforceable by the government:

1. Separation of hardware and the OS, you buy a computer, you choose 
your OS.  This does a number of things.  Most of all, let's folks know 
they have choices.

2. Force M$ to publish all their proprietary file formats, now and for 
the next 10 years.

3. IBM shit or get off the pot with OS/2 (Ecomstation (sp?)).  Either 
put some $$$ behind it, sell it to someone who can properly leverage it, 
or make it open source. No, it's not the perfect OS, but neither is 
Linux, *bsd and it's certainly better then any of the Windows variants.


These three items would bring Microsoft to their knees, unless they 
changed their ways and begun to write decent software and play fair in 
the marketplace.

They wouldn't have the leverage of forced purchases of their OS with new 
hardware. They wouldn't have the leverage of the proprietary file 
formats, which reinforces the use of Office, and hence Windows OSs. 
Between Linux, the other UNIX variants and OS/2 there would finally be 
some reasonable competition in the OS market.

Uh, oh, it was all a wonderful dream, but I've now awaken....

-- 
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric@3times25.net

I didn't have to buy my radio from a specific company to listen
to FM, why doesn't that apply to the Internet (anymore...)?