[nylug-talk] Finally, some closure on all the Dell anti-FOSS conspiracy threads...

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Tue, 1 May 2007, Ron Guerin wrote:

> Jay Sulzberger wrote:
>
>> If Dell shipped boxes meant for home use with GNU/Linux
>> installed, at a lower price than the same hardware with a
>> Microsoft OS installed, people would buy such boxes.
>
> Someone shoot me, but I'm going to drag this out a little further by
> mentioning that Dell gets money from Microsoft, yes.  Dell also gets
> money from Intel.  It's marketing money, and similar systems are "how
> things are done" in all kinds of industries.  A version used in retail
> is I believe called a "slotting fee", I'm sure someone here (Sunny at
> least) knows the correct term.  Absent some agreement between Microsoft
> and Dell to the contrary, I assume Dell would be willing to similarly
> take money from Linux distros, and then we too would get a spot on the
> grocery store shelf next to the cereals from Redmond.
>
> It is much like the problem of RAND licensing in regard to Free
> Software, right?  Businesses accept this as a cost of doing business,
> and the R part is supposed to ensure it's Reasonable.  But when you're
> writing Free Software, what's reasonable is something very different
> than what it is to commercial entities.
>
> - Ron

Ah, indeed, and these kinds of arrangements have been, for more
than thirty years, used by me in my standard rants on economics
as she is taught by professors of economics.

But Dell and Microsoft are under court order not to do what they
do, and yet they do it.  Microsoft and Dell are engaged in a long
running combination in restraint of trade. It is illegal, and it
has been adjudicated, and Microsoft lost.  This is part of the
outcome of the big Microsoft antitrust case.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/index.htm
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8389.html

oo--JS.