I must apologize... 10096

On Tue, 02 Aug 2005 08:54:05 GMT, Sinister Midget

Unlikely, especially since Be was giving BeOS away for free to OEM's. Be would have made no money on it.

Be wanted to use Microsoft's marketing to get their product into the hands of Microsoft's customers. It's no different than if I walked into a compebreastors office and stole their customer list.

Hitachi didn't want to sell their machines with BeOS only. They didn't even want to offer the OPTION of a BeOS only machine. The only option was Dual Boot. The point here is that Be was trying to ride on MS's coat tails to get into customers hands, taking advantage of their compebreastors marketing and sales power, since the machines with BeOS only would have never sold.

This is the part you keep missing. A BeOS only machine would not have worked. The only way it worked was to get put on a machine being sold for another purpose. In biological terms, they call that a parasite. Why should ANY company, much less Microsoft, want to allow that? Why should ANY company, even Microsoft be forced to allow that?

Suppose you were selling lemonade, and you were pretty succssful at it. One day, you find out one of your distributors is bundling bottles of Coke with all your bottles of Lemonade. Wouldn't you be upset? Yes, you would.

No, it wasn't. Please, be my guest and show me the logic you used to come to that conclusion that this is what I was saying. I said, and I quote:

"IMO, this is a bullpoo argument. What you are saying is "Why doesn't Microsoft let anyone ride on their coattails?" "

Please, explain how this is my claiming that anyone is requiring every OEM to put it on every machine. I said "let anyone" not "force everyone".

The strawman, if anything, here is chris's.

Doesn't matter. It's still the same thing.

Yeah, right. If Hitachi had wanted to sell machines with BeOS only, Microsoft couldn't have said a word about it. But guess what? Hitachi knew that this wouldn't sell. So instead, they decided to bundle a competing product, and you don't think they get mad? The OEM is a licensed distributor of Windows. They sign a contract to do this. It's no different than Coke or Pepsi forcing a food chain to carry only their product, except even that isn't the case. Microsoft isn't forcing any of these companies to sell only Windows. They are simply requiring that they not bundle a competing product with theirs.

That's not unreasonable by any stretch of the imagination.

Hey, while you're at it, why don't you let them change the Logo's on Windows to "Linux OS". After all, the OEM's should be allowed to do whatever they want for their bottom line, right?

Clearly, Microsoft has the right to protect it's intellectual property, even if sold by an OEM. They have the right to dictate the manner in which their product will be presented and sold to the public.

How many times do you keep throwing up strawmen about things I didn't say?