Rather than try to find the information that I had before, here is a link to the article on computers and illegal tying. As a rare exercise of discipline, I will not go overlength here, although drafts of this message were considerably longer than just a few lines This article has many points worth a paragraph on relevance to today’s technical market.

Regards.

I’m not sure where the Google/Android came in, but Google does look to be doing some things right, yet again. The EFI on Chromebooks first had the hairs on the back of my neck standing, but Google actually publicizes how to get full access needed for installing other OS’s.

Picture this hypothetical scenario. $LinuxVendor approaches USDOJ, alleging that X customers are unable to install GNU/Linux on Y new machines. $LinuxVendor shows that Microsoft produced requirements that led OEMs to tying an OS, Windows, to their hardware.

This would only apply to hardware with MS software. MS cannot make requirements for what is needed for Ubuntu!

Microsoft, when queried by USDOJ, is unable to justify those requirements.

Does Canonical have to justify their requirements?

Torvalds alleges it does little for security, OpenBSD’s founder openly complains about Red Hat, and Microsoft then cites a (former?) Red Hat developer who has said UEFI is all fine and dandy.

MS does things to benefit its OS – things which other OS developers are not doing. The other OS developers say it does not do much. Do you see the potential conflict of interest? Do not get me wrong, I am not saying it is a good thing but, assuming you even are correct about your claims (you often are not), the claims are still weak evidence.

This does not change the fact that Microsoft cannot justify those aforementioned requirements.

Justify to your satisfaction, you mean. MS has plent of info on UEFI on their site.

This is similar not only to the OOXML situation but also to FAT and DRM. Microsoft is trying to ‘normalise’ anti-competitive tactics and those who play along become unhelpful to the victims.

You have a very strong victim mentality. You think the world owes you and the open source community things. It does not. You blame the boogieman for desktop Linux doing poorly. All very irrational. Right or wrong on this topic your support is very weak.

They help Microsoft ram down people’s throats (and through regulators’ door) the thing that reduces their control over their computing while also harming competition (see Freiburg’s story).

Being a strong competitor and making products people want does "harm" competitors. That is an affect of choice.

Microsoft has done this before. I covered it. I showed it. UEFI is more of the same.

You make things up a lot and obsess over MS and Apple – pretending they are the bad guys to the good guys of Samsung and Google (for example).

Let me explain. What I meant was, if a case was made for antitrust investigation (not a lawsuit), then querying someone like you, e.g. to say UEFI had Shim, would be favourable to Microsoft’s position. You chose to play along with discriminatory (towards Linux and BSD for the most part) plot rather than antagonise it.

Sad, Roy, how you think being honest and accurate to the best of his ability is a bad thing. Sickening, really. But at least you are making it clear how you decide what is moral: to you the ends justify the means – lying is fine to you. It has been clear for a long time but I think this is the first time I have seen you admit to it.

Picture this hypothetical scenario. $LinuxVendor approaches USDOJ, alleging that X customers are unable to install GNU/Linux on Y new machines. $LinuxVendor shows that Microsoft produced requirements that led OEMs to tying an OS, Windows, to their hardware. Microsoft, when queried by USDOJ, is unable to justify those requirements. Torvalds alleges it does little for security, OpenBSD’s founder openly complains about Red Hat, and Microsoft then cites a (former?) Red Hat developer who has said UEFI is all fine and dandy. This does not change the fact that Microsoft cannot justify those aforementioned requirements. This is similar not only to the OOXML situation but also to FAT and DRM. Microsoft is trying to ‘normalise’ anti-competitive tactics and those who play along become unhelpful to the victims. They help Microsoft ram down people’s throats (and through regulators’ door) the thing that reduces their control over their computing while also harming competition (see Freiburg’s story).

Microsoft has done this before. I covered it. I showed it. UEFI is more of the same.

I don’t like analogies that involve Google/Android because Google does not mandate that manufacturers lock the bootloader to earn some kind of “certification” or special treatment. Moreover, the desktop market has a chokehold which other markets don’t have and general-purpose computers should ban tying.

No, you re using a straw man again. What I meant was, supporting what you claim to be trivial to support makes ammo for them — ammo with which to dismiss the problem of their anti-competitive tactics.

Let me take you back to 2007. Microsoft had paid Novell to support OOXML and did similar things with other companies. At the same time a lot of complaints were made against OOXML, alleging — correctly — that it was a bogus ‘open’ format with patents and no working implementations, not even by Microsoft. By having Novell as an essentially “bribed supporter” Microsoft had the ammo with which to silence opposition while fighting against ODF and open standards policies in entire nations. I covered this in hundreds of posts in this site. What you do is akin to what GNOME/Gnumeric did at the time, not just Go-OO.

The analyses that I went through today are indeed very interesting, especially a Duke law article on illegal bundling and tying, and it helped to go back through and reread the DG versus Digidyne rulings. Hardware and software are not just separate markets by virtue of common sense, but the courts have ruled so, as well.

That shows Roy’s level of moral development: if it helps MS it is bad, if it hurts MS it is good. It is not about what is intrinsically right or wrong, good or bad… it is about “winning” at any cost (other than actually making desktop Linux earn its spot on the desktop).