On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 10:21 AM, David Kaiser <[email protected]> wrote: > Agreed - with one exception. The extent of vendor lock-in they have > achieved is only because they control everything from the boot loader > all the way to the web protocols they use.
Just about all that you mentioned is userland stuff. I don't buy your assertion that Microsoft has to control the whole machine to have lock-in. For example, the boot loader... NT is bootable just fine today, via grub. The MS bootloader is not sticky at all, and yet MS has plenty of lock-in at higher layers. QED. Plus there is plenty of firmware on your machine, and in peripherals that MS does not control. They don't have to, since no one can touch their ability to rapidly create new, sticky APIs and create/embrace/extend userland protocols. They just need to be the "best answer" for most businesses in places where they have a strategic competitive advantage. Sliverlight, .NET, related development tools, etc. To keep selling MS/Linux in place of Windows, those parts are going to end up tied to MS/Linux. BTW, I'm not saying MS gives away MS/Linux for free. They can charge big bucks for it. They don't even need to put Linux "in their video" any more than Apple puts Darwin in theirs. Effectively, Win32, .NET, and various userland protocols and systems (yes, Exchange is an excellent example) are sufficient to extend their current level of lock-in. -- John. _______________________________________________ LinuxUsers mailing list [email protected] http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers
