Comments on: Linux/Android Still Faces Proxy Challenge

By: mcinsand

mcinsand — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:30:10 +0000

The modes basically remain the same as they have been for decades, then. MS used to tax all PC manufacturers with the MS-Basic ROM deal on motherboards, to ride the wave of PC growth. Apple has always been a thuggish dictator, and I remember my friends with Macintoys having to pay 4 times what I was for basically the same 3½” floppy drive. The difference, of couse, was that the Macintoy was crippled to only take drives with the sacred Apple logo.

And, both have not minded copying FOSS, as long as they didn’t have to pay for it, and as long as FOSS remained a minor player. I was happy to get MS-Word for DOS because of the interface… that I found later they had copied from EMACS. It certainly beat the way WordPerfect made me play Twister with my fingers. Apple was the first of the two to recognize that they don’t have the expertise needed for a modern, stable operating system, but then they turned BSD into a shiny, crippled toy by removing versatility and hardware support to make OSX. Of course, Apple didn’t mind journalists crediting them with Bootcamp, when the rest of us have been using boot loaders for years. And, the one time they did participate significantly in FOSS, with the Webkit project, they were a nightmare to work with, trying to get all that they could without giving anything useful back.

I’ll be glad to see them both implode!

By: Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Dr. Roy Schestowitz — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:17:08 +0000

Another difference is, with patent aggression Apple wants to castrate or ban the competition, whereas Microsoft is trying to tax the competition, driving up its price to the point where it’s uneconomic or making a Microsoft cash cow out of the competition. Both are anti-competitive tactics that merit government intervention (if only the government was funded by people and not corporations).

By: mcinsand

mcinsand — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:12:45 +0000

MS and Apple both have the same mode to stay in business, basically; intimidate and bully the markets while selling to lemmings that just don’t know that they can have better performance with more choices through FOSS. As long as FOSS market share stays low, Joe Public will not be aware that he can have far more for far less, which is why Android has Redmond and Cupertino in such a panic.

Apple and MS don’t mind being parasites off of FOSS. For decades, I actually thought that MS had developed the Word for DOS interface that freed me from playing Twister with my fingers to use WordPerfect. When Apple introduced Bootcamp, a lot of my walled garden friends asked why Linux didn’t have multibooting ability. Yeah, we had that long before Apple. And, when we look at posted ‘evidence’ that IOS is strikingly new, all we see is proof that Apple is only incorporating what many of us have had for a long time.

The point is that thuggery is all that the two have left, although Apple has more freedom for direct anticompetitive behavior than MS. The modes are the same, but, with a huge market share, MS has to be careful about using proxies. Apple escapes prosecution for market suppressive practices, especially on the desktop, because of low market share, which is a problem. If we don’t want bully monopolies, then we need to enforce consistently.

Regards,
mc