[lbo-talk] Windows Vista as Neoliberal Instrument

Matt lbo4 at beyondzero.net
Fri Feb 2 17:09:11 PST 2007


On Fri, Feb 02, 2007 at 01:34:03PM -0500, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:


> Can someone knowledgeable about this market provide some explanations?

It is the lock-in others described. This is one of the things that caused M$ to face anti-trust charges.

Windows is popular, and PC sellers need to be able to sell it because people want it. So to sell it, M$ requires they *only* sell PCs with M$ OS on them.

Or, M$ requires that the PC manufacturer pay them a licensing fee for every PC they sell, even if it does not come with Windows. Otherwise, they don't get to include Windows at all.

While Linux has threatened Windows (and big iron UNIX, like Sun or IBM or HPUX!) in the Data Center, the lock-in to file formats ensures its dominance on the desktop.

The bigger threat to M$ right now is Google - who are likely to target M$'s office apps with appliances running web-based word processors and spreadsheets. The Google Beta site has some of this stuff - word processor, spreadsheet, mail, calendar, etc.

A recent issue of the Economist discussed this, I believe. Of all the "big" software M$ sells - Exchange, MS-SQL, Sharepoint, Visual C++, etc. - 80% of their revenue still comes from just Windows and Office. Threatening Office is a *much* bigger deal to M$ than threatening their MS-SQL-on-Windows-Server market. I believe the description the magazine used was that M$ may be reaching their "zenith".

In the US a magic wand that would help would be laws requiring gov's to use open file formats and OSes that were to some degree "open". This wouldn't suddenly make all govs use Linux, but it would mean the lock-in could be threatened by more interoperability. Also, any contractor or vendor providing service to a gov should have to use open file formats. Free and open government should mean one does not have to buy proprietary software to participate.

My Linux zealot friends tell me my [relatively recent] cynicism about the real world impact of FOSS, specifically the idea that "normal people" (non-nerds) will use it at home, is because I still use an old-fashioned Linux distro: slackware. I am told I should try one of these slick distros on my laptop instead of slack. For example, when I wanted to copy files to my MP3 player's removable SD card memory, slack (and this is the most recent slack version from a few months ago) would not recognize the mem card - just the MP3 player's onboard memory.

I had to recompile my kernel to enable support for multiple LUNs. And that was after researching the cause of the problem.

Is there really a Linux distro that I can just install on this Dell Latitude D600 and I won't have to copy my old xorg.conf file to get the graphic resolutions; won't have dick around with for hours to get power management, my MP3 player, my digital camera, my various usb drives to work; I won't need to tweak the alsaconf to get mixing on the soundcard?

You get the idea. If I decide to buy a new computer (yuck) I am really considering a Mac - BSD under the covers and all those things I list above will *just work* when I plug them in.

I guess I am betraying FOSS because when people ask me to come over and setup a linux machine for them I say no - if they aren't prepared to teach themselves they aren't going to want to support it themselves which means they will call me. I say buy a Dell and keep your support contract alive as long as you have the PC. Less work for them and less work for me.

*shrug*

Matt

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