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

[Joe Moore]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 07:21:35AM -0500, Geoffrey wrote:
> 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.

OEMs have traditionally claimed that additional OSs would drive up their
support costs.

Assuming this is true, they could charge a "service surcharge" on their
OS line item over the license fee from the OS vendor.  This means that
you could be paying $55 to have RedHat ($49.99 "retail price") pre-installed
on your system, with the extra $5 going to the OEM's support of the OS.

I wonder what would happen if the OEM really looked at the cost of 
alternative OS support vs. the cost of supporting Windows.  What do you
think the service surcharge would be for a Microsoft OS?

--Joe