Great article 248

Long time coming, I bet!

I don't agree with that. You are plainly using price-fixing in a negative connotation that implies illegal conduct. Your admitted conditions do not meet any legal definition of illegal conduct.

A high price will encourage compebreastion since they can get in under a high price umbrella a lot easier than under a low one. If it takes two cents to make a software program and I am selling them for $100 each, I am leaving $99.98 worth of room for my compebreastor. He might "only" charge $80 and thus undercut me by 20%. Microsoft was accused of setting an unjustifiably low price, for example "free", for things like the browser and media player, and so they froze out compebreastors who might want to offer the same thing for more than zero.

It's a two edged sword and Microsoft, once they set the low bar, cannot effectively raise it after they are victorious, since they will get sued by the courts for manipulating compebreastion. They have never done that, BTW. What Microsoft does is include functionality with enough utility as a "free" feature of Windows in order to keep Windows itself appealing to customers who buy it and ISVs who produce applications compatible with it. Anyone wanting to sell something in that line has to offer a much superior product that can justify the extra price.

Windows 2003 comes with a fairly extensive tape and disk backup program, but VERITAS, Computer buttociates, and a number of others offer extended capabilities starting for over $1000. People pay that for these upgrades because they do a lot more than Windows does for free. Netscape, OTOH, didn't have any more to give. Firefox, claimed to be better than IE, is still free for the asking and is unlikely to be able to ever charge for its functionality regardless of its GPL background.

Obviously, since you are not finding anything! But you misread the words and so misunderstand the facts. Try to do better next time.