I must apologize... 10099

On Tue, 2 Aug 2005 13:16:59 -0700, Jim Richardson

Why would I care if an OEM puts firefox on their machine? I certainly don't, and vendors have been including alternate browsers for almost a decade.

You're absolutely right though. MS makes no money directly from IE, other than as a component that every customer expects from an OS (Ability to surf the web). Wait, that's not quite true, since AOL pays MS for use of IE in their software (I buttume this is some kind of support contract, because you don't need to pay them to use IE in your application). But, for the most part, no.

The key here is that you're still using Windows, even if you're using Firefox.

Yet you can't even seem to come up with a valid rebuttal other than "bullpoo". Nice.

The fact is, Hitachi wouldn't heve even been considering it if Be hadn't given them the licenses for free.

"got caught at"? All they did was enforce the contract that Hitachi willingly entered into. Whatever you may want to believe, Be signed that OEM contract. And you can bet they had a team of lawyers read it first too. They agreed to the terms.

And again you can't really address the point, can you?

I'll take that as a "Yes, you're right".

Yes, Allow. Hitachi wants to resell MS's product, and they signed a reseller agreement to follow MS's terms. That's a contractual obligation.

You keep forgetting about the contract that Hitachi willingly entered into with Microsoft. That contract is what allows MS to set the terms.

I said, why should they let anyone? That was a question.

Huh? Your logic escapes me. If the OEM had a contract with Netsacpe, and it conflicted with a contract from another vendor, then the OEM has to decide with conctract is more important. You can't honor both.