Selling Linux to Windows Users

[Bart Silverstrim]

Kjetil Halvorsen wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 15:59, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>> Matthew Flaschen wrote:
>>
>>> Derek Broughton wrote:
>>>> Monopoly _is_ a low-life business act, which is why
>>>> even the heartl of capitalism, the USA, has laws against it
>>>> (toothless, true, but laws all the same).
>>> Actually, it's perfectly legal to have a monopoly,  as long as you
>>> don't commit ant-competitive acts to acquire or maintain it.
>> That's splitting hairs of the finest kind, since it's really _difficult_ to
>> have a monopoly without being anti-competitive.
> 
> That is not splitting hairs. I prefer (in calculators) a calculator with
> reverse polish notation (RPN). Those are expensive because only
> HP makes them. But HP did nothing to monopolize the market,
> every maker is free to make RPN calculators.  Until they do, I
> will have to pay HP's heavy price.

That's not really a monopoly since it's kind of like saying saying Ford 
has a monopoly because I like the Ford logo on the steering wheel or 
Coke has a monopoly because of their cool bottle shape on cool bottle 
shaped soft drinks.

Apple was accused of having a monopoly on OS X systems by Psystar and 
that was thrown out of court if I recall correctly, since they have Mac 
hardware and license OS X only to be run on it.

Monopolies are not a bad thing, per say, but you can't do things to as a 
monopoly using your monopoly position to squash a new guy with an idea. 
I.e., not too many companies are doing space exploration...NASA almost 
corners that market. Microsoft *did* exploit their monopoly position 
with 99% market share telling companies like Dell that, hey, if you want 
to put Linux on your system, that's fine but you're going to pay us a 
fee anyway or we might not let you install Windows on your systems 
anymore which would guarantee their sales would tank. That's illegal.

If you're a defacto monopoly or by virtue of a better product or 
service, it's perfectly legal.

Since monopolies are kind of spelled out legally in the US as to what's 
okay and what's not, I think there's really not much to argue about on 
that particular topic, is there?