Comments

• mcinsand

  2012-11-28 02:49:54

  The times are certainly getting very interesting. Since Windows 98, XP has been the only iteration with any traction... and that was the one with such poor performance that it was just the kick in the pants I needed to move to FOSS. Something I have to stress over and over, though, is that the world seems to have forgotten the case of Data General versus Digidyne. It was a good step towards firming up the need to keep OS and hardware markets separate; bundling/tying the two is an anticompetitive measure that would never be accepted as legal in any other market. However, the fossils in the US legal system are still decades behind in technology. If a car company was trying to restrict a car to using only fuel or oil from that company, you can be certain that the DOJ would be sending out summons by the truckload. UEFI is only a band-aid so that MS can pretend to care about security when they peddle a product with insecurity baked in from the ground up.
  
  And, once more, if MS implodes, so does Apple. Without MS to make Apple look good, there will only be FOSS to let people see how Apple is merely an overpriced, underchoiced, freedom-free, technological straightjacket.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2012-11-28 03:11:02

  Without MS to make Apple look good, there will only be FOSS to let people see how Apple is merely an overpriced, underchoiced, freedom-free, technological straightjacket.

  
  
  That's just what happened in the phablet market.

• mcinsand

  2012-11-28 17:14:45

  For a long time, the market favored both members of the duopoly. MS made Apple look good with Windows' poor reliability and security. At the same time, Apple made MS look good, with Apple's purest hatred of freedom and selling anything that is not overpriced/underfeatured. Android offers so much more in features, reliability, security, performance, and innovation, that its domination of the tablet and handset market is certainly no surprise... except to the duopoly, of course.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2012-11-28 17:23:25

  The duopoly is a desktop one. It happens to be passable to the mobile area, where Google almost enjoys a monopoly now (although when the code is free and there is no coercion it's not monopolistic)

• NotZed

  2012-11-28 05:11:09

  All the crapware is of course a direct result of M$ taking all the profits out of the industry - whatever it is that OEMs are charged for per-pc licenses is just money they have to try to make up somewhere else, and the margins are so thin. You still need to dig shit out of the ground and ship it across the world to make physical hardware, and yet whilst hardware costs continue to plummet through advances in productivity and manufacturing, the cost of commodity software whose value is essentially 0$ is still exorbitant.
  
  M$ making their own hardware - full of adware itself (so they keep making money even after they rooted everyone on the first sale) - is just another way they're screwing their long-term partners, who can't be happy about it. If those get their shit together that will have more impact on the industry than the general public who for the most part simply use what they're given.
  
  It's also rather disingenuous for M$ to turn around and blame the manufacturers for making sub-standard hardware given they just don't have the margins to play with that either ms or apple do.
  
  Of course Billy-Gee himself was the one who said hardware will be free in 10 years ... 8 years ago.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2012-11-28 17:24:04

  Do you have the quote offhand?

• mcinsand

  2012-11-28 17:52:30

  Darn. I can't reply to your reply, however, I would be afraid of Google if not for the core being GPL'd. Android's free code underpinnings prevent monopolization, which is yet another big plus to the GPL, as well as another point against the BSD license. BSD code is good fodder for proprietary software, since it permits removing the freedom. Although a parasite like Apple can take the contributions of thousands to make a walled garden, GPL keeps the code open. That's no doubt a huge part of why Linux' innovation pace leaves BSD in the dust; new ideas stay as part of the community as a whole.
  
  At least with Android, the mistakes made in Unix' origins are not being repeated. AT&T had a great operating system on their hands, but they were not going to pursue it commercially for fear of antitrust. However, there were too many pieces where AT&T did not have the appropriate rights to free the code.
  
  Again, I would fear Google if not for the GPL. They have decided to make free software an anchor to the ecosystem so that even Google, Android's main backing, cannot not close it up.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2012-11-28 18:37:46

  Android's core code (excepting the kernel) is Apache licensed. Google promised China to keep Android free/open, though.

• mcinsand

  2012-11-28 20:09:53

  Well that's a scary splash of icewater! I had it backwards, thinking that there were some Apache-licensed portions without realizing the extent. Apache isn’t really any better than BSD, since a company can prioritize and gut the software, the same way Apple crippled the BSD OS. Granted, the kernel mods are protected and being rolled into the main trunk, but these permissive licenses suck! The best way to protect choice is to license in such a manner that some sleaze of a company does not have the freedom to remove the freedom.