Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Yeah, but it seems to me that there was more than one guy out there that 
got started building PC's from inexpensive Asian boards in their garages 
and selling them cheaper than another big "monopoly" (that being IBM). 
What were ther names again? "Dell-somebodyorother"?, "Compaq-whosits?" 
"Gateway-idunno"? :-)

Lets say there is a significant "Windows Tax" on your garden variety PC. 
$100.00? Someone like Dell can get a price break on PC boards because of 
volume, but they've also got huge overhead associated with a large 
company. A couple of guys in a garage could start assembling Linux PCs 
and bundling a boatload of other GPLed software on them and shipping 
them without the $100 tax - maybe dropping prices even further with 
other creative strategies. Probably, they could provide all sorts of 
other "value added" features (like descent user's manuals?) and start a 
whole new market. Its not like this industry isn't loaded with examples 
of exactly that sort of formula working in the past.

My point is that it isn't exactly some sort of hopeless cause. Lots of 
people look at Ada as a "hopeless cause" (how's that for getting back on 
topic? ;-) but we're still here fighting the good fight. Toppling 
Micro$oft may seem like tilting at windmills, but it *could* be done. It 
has happened before with lots of other companies. Rather than complain 
about Microsoft and accuse Bill Gates' parents of not being married when 
they had him, why not dream up an alternative?

MDC



Robert I. Eachus wrote:
> 
> 
> More to the point, assume that your grandmother does know what an OS is, 
> and intends to download Red Hat from the net for her new computer. 
> Unless she puts the system together from parts, the probability that she 
> won't end up paying the Microsoft tax is zero.
> 
> That more than any other issue is why Microsoft has a monopoly.  They 
> offer the system builders a deal, either $X per system if you sell boxes 
> without a Microsoft OS, or $Y per system if you sell every "desktop" or 
> laptop computer with Windows.  And X >> Y, so that to be competitive, 
> they have to sell you a Microsoft OS whether you want it or not.

-- 
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

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