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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I think the car analogy is quite
meaningless. The car manufacturers are entirely responsible for
the car as a system and cannot sell it without stringent safety
criteria being met. This would not be possible without them
having control over the components and their integration into
the whole system. There are bits they could leave out such as
radios but not anything necesaary to drive the car.<br>
<br>
The OS in a computer is more like the driver of the car. The car
company is not responsible for how anyone drives, provided the
car is designed in such a way to make it safe for suitable
drivers (e.g. not children, or people who have some disability
unless it has been modied). Computers can run perfectly well
under many different operation systems provided they are built
with the appropriate compatibility. The monopoly enjoyed by
Microsoft prevents consumers choosing their OS of choice. For
software that runs under Windows I prefer XP, but my laptop
bundled with Windows 7 home edition cannot be "downgraded" to
XP. This is quite wrong and trading standards organisations are
wrong to let MS get away with their domination of the hardware
manufacturers and retail distributer network.<br>
<br>
Howard Lane<br>
GreenNet<br>
<br>
On 5/3/2013 14:51, Albert Dengg wrote:<br>
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<blockquote
cite="mid:20130305145118.GH24700@mjolnir.nicenamecrew.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">hello,
On Tue, Mar 05, 2013 at 01:31:49AM +0100, Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos wrote:
...
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> It is not about companies and marketplace. It is about consumers who
consider options that provide a good balance between quality and price
of the products they buy. Freedom to modify the product may be
considered by some, but still it is within some balance.
For example would you pay 100.000 euros for a car where you can replace
engine, lights, seats, cpu, software etc, or would you buy a 15000 mass
produced one? The example is exaggerated, but consider that even smaller
price differences, make a lot of impact to certain people.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">I think your analogy is not entirely accurate:
the situation with cars is actually that they tend to include more and
more technology to actually prevent the customer from changing
anything...not because it is a technical requirement but to be able to
sell more expensive spare parts.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">So in almost every example I can think of, if companies are forced with
legislation to break their products in multiple separate parts, prices
would go up in the average case, and go down in few (geeky) cases. Do
you really believe the average person is prepared to pay more for
something that has not any immediate impact visible to him (not everyone
is a mechanic or software developer). Most probably he'd just import his
product from a country where they don't have those laws.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">well...how would it be more expensive for them?
we are actually not asking to support linux in particular (in the way
that you can call their support hotline and start asking questions on
running linux on their hardware), but only to leave out a non essential
part (like for example you would want to order your car withouth leather
seats because you want to use your custom velvet seat covers and
therefore have no use for the more expensive extra option of leather
seats).
yours,
albert
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