quote:
Originally posted by The Muffin Man:
Support the competition, hurt the monopoly!
i am sorry, nothing personal, this is a mainly semantic issue, but how can there be competition against a monopoly?
microsoft are not a true monopoly because companies such as Apple computing and... RiscOS Ltd (i had to struggle to think of a second one!) are in competition with them. Actually not directo competition, since Apple and RiscOS both make software for non x86 computers. Actually microsoft are a monopoly then, and that's it, but only if you're talking about x86 computers only.
Linux, *BSD and any other open source and free systems are not made by companies and are therefore not in competition with microsoft. using linux will hurt microsoft in that you will pay for less microsoft software, but it will not increase anybody's market share thereby decreasing microsoft's, unless you buy a distro from a *ix vendor, like red hat or mandrake (and i stress, only real bought ones count here). in fact red hat et al are actually microsoft's only true competition right now.
OK OK i know that was a big excercise in pedantry but it had to be said (by some pedant or another!)
