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Fedora's Wildeboer Says Microsoft Uses Intel-Like Illegal Tactics to Marginalise Competition

Acer Aspire



Summary: "Acer has a contract with MSFT that only gives them deep discount when they pit Win on *all* machines," alleges a Red Hat employee

Jan Wildeboer, who works for Red Hat, responded to Glyn Moody's rant that Acer netbooks will dual-boot the Linux-based Android and Windows XP (instead of just Android as originally planned). The Windows part seems like the 'freebie', not Android, so Moody asks "and why, exactly?"



It sure seems like a form of dumping and the use of XP as opposed to Vista 7 matches what we already know about Windows that's sold for $5 apiece, given away for free, or reportedly involves Microsoft paying the OEM to saddle all machines with Windows. There are different ways of "compensating" OEMs, or passing kickbacks.

Wildeboer says that Acer has a contract with Microsoft and that it "only gives them deep discount when they pit Win on *all* machines, so even when user only uses Android, it is still a +1 on MSFT license sales"

“Acer has a contract with MSFT that only gives them deep discount when they pit Win on *all* machines.”
      --Jan Wildeboer
That's probably illegal because Microsoft is a monopoly. The recent Dell-Intel scandal helps defend such an accusation [1, 2].

Red Hat or Google can hopefully challenge such tactics in court. Wildeboer does not seem to believe it would be productive. He also claims that it "has been like that for 20 years now. DoJ ignores."

Well, just over a decade ago Microsoft had cronies put inside the US Department of 'Justice' [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] . Some say this can explain why no government lawsuit against Microsoft has been filed since then. The monopoly abuse carried on.

"A lot of people make that analogy that competing with Bill Gates is like playing hardball. I'd say it's more like a knife fight."

--Gary Clow, famous Microsoft victim



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