First official reply from the European Commission ref. complaint on illegal forced selling of Windows

simo simo.sorce at xsec.it
Mon Jul 3 12:50:41 UTC 2006


On Mon, 2006-07-03 at 14:37 +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 06:07:25PM +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
> >    http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/refund/node24.html
> > 
> > namely the consumer demand powers the fact that Microsoft has a virtual
> > monopoly.
> 
> oh, and BTW I didn't say I agreed with this position; but we have to
> expect that the `it's because the market wants it' argument be repeated
> over and over ... until people really start to *demand* free software.

But People really demands free software.. you can't expect that
everybody suddenly do it at once!

Just as an example, a well known italian computer shops that let you
choose your computer components than assemble, test and ship it has just
started offering Ubuntu (the configurator checks explicitly for
component compatibility against Ubuntu if you choose to do so).

This means that there is enough demand for the home PC, I can't believe
there is not some demand for laptops too. It's only that it can't show
up in numbers because you are not allowed to choose anything else but
Windows, you can't even ask for the laptop without an OS.

Simo.




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