WE SHALL try to keep this short and polite. It’s supposed to be constructive criticism, not a complaint, and it’s needed because Dell is doing something which angers some GNU/Linux enthusiasts. It’s seen as a bit of a insult, which should be trivial to correct.
While working on my personal blog site, which happens to have Google Adsense ads running on it, I was surprised to find Google ads for Linux-powered Dell desktops showing up.
It’s one small step for Dell and consumer Linux — and one giant leap for Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux efforts. Specifically, Dell is spending advertising dollars to promote PCs with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled. The move has significant implications for the business world as well. Here’s why.
First, some details about the advertisement. Many many U.S. newspapers on Sunday, October 12, included a multi-page Dell flier. Among the many products advertised was the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, a low-cost sub-notebook designed for email and Web browsing.
Early in the year Dell produced some viral videos and more professional commercials even made it into television, as shown here last week.
If this an Dell / Enfatico spot– we take back all the slams we had to the advertising agency prior… It’s about Linux! Whoo hoo!!
We’ve produced an Ogg version of this video, as some readers prefer it that way.
This is good. Dell is showing GNU/Linux in the mainstream.
But Why Make a Mess on the Carpet?
Over at the blog of Ken (of Lobby4Linux fame), it’s shown that Dell’s paper advertisements for GNU/Linux-based sub-notebooks are ‘decorated’ with a prominent reminder that Dell recommends Windows. What’s that about? If you advertise Coke (as in Coca Cola), you don’t attach a label to it saying that Pepsi is the better choice. It makes no sense. Are they trying to actually sell what they advertise? Watch the image in Ken’s blog and pay attention to the cynical remarks.
Dell screwed up. No wait…they didn’t screw anything up. They fully intended to do what they did. Now tell me they are not under the thumb of Microsoft. Why was this statement necessary? Let the customer decide. So tell me Dell is a friend of Linux or that they are not complete quislings for the Redmond Empire. Oh please…I do so want to hear you tell me this. It will be an Academy Award performance. It will have to be to explain away this.
You can’t advertise Linux because Microsoft has threatened you with exorbitant licensing fees and other sanctions if you do. That would be my guess. In fact, If I were to guess further, I would hazard a guess that those top-secret vendor agreements Microsoft demanded you sign actually states that you cannot actively advertise or promote Linux. I could be wrong…but if I am I’m not far off.
For what it’s worth, we remain suspicious — based on actual evidence — that Dell pays Microsoft quite handsomely for sales of GNU/Linux-based computers. We don’t exactly recommend Dell, and that’s putting it gently.
Why? Because, according to the Morning Herald, both the Beijing Olympics committee and Lenovo, a major backer of the games, had deliberately chosen to run XP operating system on the games’ PC because they didn’t trust Vista. Turns out they shouldn’t have trusted XP either, but they should have known that. Best of all, Lenovo chairman, Yang Yuanqing, said Lenovo had chosen not to use Vista because, “If it’s not stable, it could have some problems.”
So, next time you go to an online PC sales Web site and you see that line about “We recommend Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium,” just remember: They’re lying.
it’s all part of a silly scheme that was never intended to assist customers. Shouldn’t the likes of the ASA step in?
An Illusions of Choice
A reader of ours from Australia sent a gentle alert about Dell’s Web site in his country. “The Dell website fails,” he writes.
“I went there yesterday just to check things out, did a search for “Ubuntu” to see what search results I’d get. The first system that came up was a Vostro notebook with Ubuntu, so naturally I clicked the link [but] it comes with Vista. And there is no option to choose Ubuntu.”
To summarise, says the reader: “It was rubbish, you get a Vostro notebook put in front of you like “hey we got these with Ubuntu”, then when you click the link its, “you can have Vista or umm Vista”.”
Maybe it’s an innocent mistake. Hopefully it is. █
“We should whack them [Dell over GNU/Linux dealings], we should make sure they understand our value.”
Those were the words of Microsoft counsel Tom Burt, regarding the upholding of a previous ruling overturning the $1.5B Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft patent infringement judgment.
Curiously, according to the Associated Press article, it appears that Microsoft willingly stepped in to this conflict as a defendant after Lucent Technologies filed suit against PC manufacturers Dell and Gateway.
In February 2007, a jury in U.S. District Court in San Diego determined Microsoft infringed on two patents that cover the encoding and decoding of audio into the digital MP3 format, a popular way to convert music from CDs into files on computers and vice versa.
Six months later, the judge who presided over the case, Rudi M. Brewster, vacated the ruling, saying Microsoft’s Windows Media Player software does not infringe on one of the two patents in question.
Brewster, siding with Microsoft, also said the second patent is jointly owned by both Alcatel-Lucent and Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, a German company that Microsoft paid $16 million in exchange for use of the technology. Since Fraunhofer did not sue Microsoft, the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker was in the clear.
…
The MP3 patent claims were just two of 15 made by Lucent Technologies Inc. in 2003 against PC makers Gateway Inc. and Dell Inc. for technology developed by Bell Labs, Lucent’s research arm.
Later that year, Microsoft added itself to the list of defendants, saying the patents were closely tied to its Windows operating system. France’s Alcatel bought Lucent in 2006.
So, Microsoft are the (sorta) good guys here? I’m at a loss for words, but good for them I guess.
The regulators are fast asleep. Apart from the fact that Microsoft makes profit from GNU/Linux preinstalls [1, 2, 3], it’s still nearly impossible to find and then to get them.
Taiwan, China, Poland, [1, 2], and Hungary have formally complained about Microsoft this month, but not the United States. As pointed out yesterday (see the comment at the bottom), the American (US) regulators are indifferent because they are themselves corrupt. Meanwhile, says a reader, Steve Ballmer’s trip to Portugal might be aimed at intercepting Free software.
It’s not grim news all around though. Yesterday, for example, this article showed up and it proves that some people do get in trouble for buying Microsoft. Quebec’s government comes under legal scrutiny, which is not exactly surprising given prior complaints about the procurement process there. It’s equally bad in the UK and elsewhere.
Quebec’s open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company’s products rather than using free alternatives.
The lawsuit by Facil was lodged with the Quebec Superior Court on July 15 and made public on Wednesday. In it, the group says the provincial government has refused to entertain competing bids from all software providers, opting instead to supply public-sector departments with products bought from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle Corp.
Microsoft may have given up on its old strategy. See the previous post about a patents revenue strategy and recall those SCO analogies . Microsoft suffers from a customer retention issue. Could Microsoft buy out the lawsuit and the competitor? It could be less expensive than buying out threats like XenSource (using Citrix as a proxy) due to competitive bids and a large numbers of players in this space. Naturally, GNU and Linux can spread endlessly between vendors, which keeps them secure from hostile takeovers, but software patents change this. Novell and Microsoft actively try to change this using “licensing”. This exclusionary move shows just why Novell and Microsoft are already becoming the same company.
“This exclusionary move shows just why Novell and Microsoft are already becoming the same company.”Let us return to exclusion at the OEM level. Exclusionary OEM contracts is something that we covered before and this article from the Czech Republic was mentioned some days ago. It shows just how impossible Microsoft has made it to choose an operating system other than Windows (or no operating system at all, i.e. just bare-metal hardware bundles). Over at Groklaw, Pamela just wrote: “Isn’t it ridiculous that it’s nearly impossible to avoid buying Vista on a new computer, even if you have no desire to get Vista? And then Microsoft counts such “sales” as indicating an interest in Vista.”
Going a long way back, you can still find this detailed page on the impossibility of obtaining a Toshiba computer without Microsoft software. Not much has change since then.
I hope that this web page will prove useful to those people who want to purchase a laptop without Microsoft Windows. The short summary is:
* It is near impossible to buy a laptop without Windows
* The Microsoft Software License Agreement allows you to return the software if you do not agree to its terms.
* It is difficult, but not impossible to get Toshiba (at least in Australia) to send you a cheque in return for the Windows License.
My name is David Chun. I am an undergraduate student at UCLA, where I am in the UCLA Center for American Public Policy and Politics. I am working this spring as an intern at the Consumer Project on Technology. On May 25, 1998 through June 3, 1998, I called 12 computer manufacturers, known in the industry as original equipment manufactures (OEMs), attempting to buy computers without a Microsoft Windows operating systems.
This is not competition. It’s free market distortion. █
The memo — its full text is provided later in the story, along with HP’s response — briefly explains a patent cross-licensing deal between HP and Microsoft. By itself, that’s not a big deal, especially since it was sent two years ago. But the memo asserts that “Microsoft will soon be launching a patent-based legal offensive against Linux and other free software projects.” Leaders in the open source community have been warning of such attacks for some time. The memo reveals there may be very good reason for the worry.
Dell has become the first systems maker to join last year’s Linux pact between Microsoft and Novell covering interoperability, technical support and intellectual property rights.
[...]
In mid-November, shortly after the pact was announced, Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer said companies that sell or run Linux, but aren’t covered under the Novell deal, are illegally using Microsoft’s IP. “We believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability,” he said.
He said in a later meeting: “I do think it [Novell deal] clearly establishes that open source is not free.”
NU/Linux laptops continue to arrive, but Microsoft is working hard to end this. It ought to be emphasised that ASUS has already said that it is now “tied up” with Microsoft [1, 2, 3]. ASUS is not the only one to have come under such imprisonment a relationship, but it incidentally spoke out about it. It’s the usual pressure tactics, whose goal is to have distribution of Linux curtailed or neglected.
There’s lots more to to speculate about. ASUS picked Xandros, which has some iffy past with Microsoft, never mind under the Corel flag.
More worryingly, have people forgotten that Xandros is a patent ally of Microsoft? In simple terms, despite the claims from the CEO of the company, ASUS is carrying a liability which can then be passed to users in the form of burden/cost that’s brought as incentives to Microsoft. This is extortion. Software patents are void in this case as nothing was ever shown.
OEM pressure tactics were covered quite extensively before, but a reader has sent us a pointer to the following strong message from 1999. We reproduce it below. The anonymous reader added: “Here’s an interesting comment with first hand experience about how hard it is to overcome Microsoft.”
Jean-Louis Gassée on why PC manufacturers don’t sell non MS products
* To: info-policy-notes <info-policy-notes@essential.org>
* Subject: Jean-Louis Gassée on why PC manufacturers don’t sell non MS products
* From: James Love <love@cptech.org>
* Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 12:05:55 -0500
* Organization: http://www.cptech.org
* Sender: jamie@essential.org
This important essay by Jean-Louis Gassée is a devastating
critique of the 1995 DOJ/Microsoft consent agreement and
a clear explanation to the barriers facing MS competitors
in the OS market.
Jamie
Be Newsletter
Volume III, Issue 8, February 24, 1999
Crack in the Wall
By Jean-Louis Gassée
You’re the CEO of a PC OEM, delivering some great news to Wall
Street: “In an effort to offer greater variety and performance
to the customer, our factory now installs three operating systems
on the hard disk — Windows, Linux, and the BeOS. The reaction
has been spectacular. Customers love having a choice of OS, and
the press — from John Dvorak in PC Magazine to John Markoff in
the New York Times to Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal –
has heralded us for our bold move. This is a great step forward for
the consumer and for the industry. Oh, and by the way, we lost
$50 million since we no longer qualify for Windows rebates. But it’s
a sacrifice for the common good.”
You’re now the ex-CEO of a PC OEM.
We know that the Windows rebate scheme exists — but what *is* it,
exactly? And why are so many OEMs afraid of losing it? Windows
pricing practices are closely guarded secrets, so we don’t know
exactly how the rebate is structured, but we can assume that it works
something like this: The total cost of a Windows license consists
of a base price offset by a rebate. The base price is set; the
rebate is flexible, and contingent on the “dedication” of the licensee.
That is, the more you “advertise” the product — through
prominent positioning, expanded shelf space, and so on — the
greater your rebate. This quid pro quo rebate looks innocent enough,
and can be a useful tool in a competitive market.
But when you’re running a monopoly — and when it comes to
out-of-the-box, consumer-grade PC clones, Microsoft *is* a monopoly –
“prominent positioning” and “expanded shelf space” have little meaning.
Microsoft has no interest in getting “more” footage on the OS shelf,
because they’ve already got it all. What interests them — the only
useful advantage they can “buy” (to be kind) with
their rebate — is to ensure that no one else will get any.
So how is “dedication” measured? A real-life example: We’ve been
working with a PC OEM that graciously — and bravely — decided to
load the BeOS on certain configurations in its product line. However,
there’s a twist in their definition of “loading.” When the customer
takes the machine home and starts it up for the first time, the
Microsoft boot manager appears — but the BeOS is nowhere in sight.
It seems the OEM interpreted Microsoft’s licensing provisions to mean
that the boot manager
could not be modified to display non-Microsoft systems. Furthermore,
the icon for the BeOS launcher — a program that lets the user shut
down Windows and launch the BeOS — doesn’t appear on the Windows
desktop; again, the license agreement prohibits the display of
“unapproved” icons. To boot the “loaded” BeOS, the customer must read
the documentation, fish a floppy from the box and finish the
installation. Clever.
One suspects that Linux suffers from the same fealty to Microsoft’s
licensing strictures. Linux is the culmination of 30 years of
development by the Unix community. Surely an OEM can’t complain
about Linux’s quality or its price: It’s good, and it’s free. If
Microsoft licensees are as free to choose as Microsoft claims they
are, why isn’t Linux factory installed on *any* PC?
If you randomly purchase 1,000 PC clones, how many have any OS other
than Windows loaded at the factory? Zero.
But what about all these announcements from companies such as IBM,
Dell, and others? A few URLs are supplied here for your convenience:
If you parse the statements, Linux is offered and supported on servers,
not on PCs. Another IBM story is that installation is to be performed
by the reseller on some PCs or laptops, not by IBM at the factory.
As an industry insider gently explained to me, Microsoft abides by a
very simple principle: No cracks in the wall. Otherwise, water will
seep in and sooner or later the masonry will crumble.
Guarding against even the smallest crack is important to Microsoft,
because it prevents a competitor from taking advantage of a phenomenon
that economists call the “network effect.” The “network effect”
manifests itself as an exponential increase in the value of a product
or service when more people use it. Applied to a computer operating
system, the effect works like this: As more people install and use an
OS, the demand for applications increases. Developers respond to the
demand, which attracts the attention of OEMs and
resellers, who promote the OS in order to sell the apps, which attracts
more customers… The key to all this is distribution and visibility —
in other words, “shelf space.”
Bill Gates understands the network effect well — he once quoted it to
me, chapter and verse. In the Fall of 1983, when I was still running
Apple France, I met with Bill in Paris and we got into a conversation
regarding the market share limitations of DOS. No problem, he said, with
the wide distribution we enjoy, we’ll get the attention of third
parties, and the marketplace will fix these shortcomings.
This puts statements by senior Microsoft executive Paul Maritz in
perspective. In reaction to my claim that Be wants to co-exist with
Microsoft, Mr. Maritz said (as quoted by Joseph Nocera in Fortune
Magazine):
“[Gassee is] articulating his strategy for entry into the
operating system marketplace. But on the other hand, I
know that Be has built a full-featured operating system,
so what I believe he’s doing here is outlining his
strategy about how he will initially co-exist with Windows
and, over time, attract more applications to his
platform.”
Mr. Nocera interpreted Mr. Maritz’s interpretation thus:
“In other words, Gassee’s spiel is little more than a
trick intended to lull Microsoft. But Microsoft isn’t so
easily fooled! Microsoft will never ignore a potential
threat to its Windows fortress, no matter how slight. The
software giant may be in the middle of an antitrust trial,
but — as Andy Grove says — only the paranoid survive…”
Industry sages such as T.J. Rodgers, the CEO of Cypress Semiconductors,
as well as venture capitalists aligned with Microsoft, criticize the
Department of Justice’s intervention in the new Pax Romana we’re
supposed to enjoy under Microsoft’s tutelage. Don’t compete in court,
compete in the marketplace, they say.
I’m a free marketer myself; I left a statist environment for the level
playing field created by the rule of law in this, my adopted country. A
free market is *exactly* what we want. One where a PC OEM isn’t
threatened by financial death for daring to offer operating systems
that compete with the Windows monopoly.
We started with a thought experiment. We end with a real-life offer for
any PC OEM that’s willing to challenge the monopoly: Load the BeOS on
the hard disk so the user can see it when the computer is first booted,
and the license is free. Help us put a crack in the wall.
This is not a healthy state of trade, is it? Intel is constantly accused of using the same tricks and breaking the law. █
Dell has begun booting GNU/Linux ‘by default’ on many of its new laptops. However, it was disappointing to find this information in an article which looks at Dell’s exciting new technology:
The OS itself is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10…
That’s not how GNU/Linux is supposed to happen and its adoption come about. As the Infinite Hands song goes, there’s no room for Microsoft, for SCO, or for anybody else to control, to charge and to manipulate GNU/Linux. They sure will try. It’s a form of market distortion. Novell welcomes this distortion. Maybe it’s part of a plan. █
There’s lots to catch up with and here is just a summary.
Is LiMo the OIN of Mobile Linux?
This interesting new article from The Register is little cynical (that’s just the publication’s style). It seems to suggest that LiMo members may benefit from somewhat of a patent pool, a patent shield, some would say an “umbrella”. There is also some legitimate criticism:
For all its talk of openness, just a quarter of the code in the LiMo Foundation’s mobile platform is open source, making it a minefield to navigate in terms of protected patents - 300,000 patents to be precise.
“300,000 patents,” eh? Can people finally understand why OpenMoko feels cornered? Such an industrial environment fosters no development whatsoever, unless you have already established yourself as a giant, a monopoly. And then there’s the patent-trolling…
Is Microsoft Breaking the Indian Law?
This week’s main story probably comes from India. Previously we looked at how software patents can harm Free software. Microsoft understands this and it’s prepared to exploit. Watch this update from India and read this comment:
Infosys was there and pushing for software patents. They are totally against the open source and free software.
Symantec was there and also pushed for software patents.
Microsoft was there.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) was also pushing for software patents.
Software patents are not legal in India, but Microsoft may be ‘leading the way’ by breaking law there, just as it does in South Africa. Professor Derek Keats has already accused Microsoft of breaking the law in hope of setting precedence .
According to Richard Stallman, the co-developer of the GNU-Linux operating system and proponent of Free Software says, “Software patents are patents which cover software ideas, ideas which you would use in developing software. [...]”
[...]
Indian Position
With respect to computer software, in Patents (Amendment) Act, 2002, the scope of non-patentable subject matter in the Act was amended to include the following: “a mathematical method or a business method or a computer programme per se or algorithms”.
[...]
India for its part seems to have adopted the more conservative approach of the European patenting norms for software. But the Ordinance definitely has its use and relevance in today’s India, particularly for our growing domestic semi- conductor industry. This, along with judicial tempering might definitely ensure a judicious use of patent protection while allowing the industry to grow through innovations and inventions, thereby, mitigating the risks of trivial patents chocking the life out of real innovations and inventions. This is the reason a patent should always be treated as a “double edged sword”, to be wielded with caution and sensitivity.
Now whether, in reality this will be implemented on a rigid basis or will become broad in scope through application (as in the U.S.), and, more importantly, whether the Ordinance would, in fact, result in increased innovation and inventions in the software industry, remains to be seen.
What will it be in India? Please send in some feedback shall you come across information of value.
Former Patent Troll Tracker blogger Rick Frenkel has left Cisco Systems and moved to Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a top Silicon Valley law firm, where he is of counsel. Today is his first day at the firm.
“We were impressed with his breadth and depth of experience,” said Michael Barclay, an IP litigation partner at Wilson Sonsini and a PTT reader, natch. “Rick has developed a lot of knowledge and insights about patent trolls that will be helpful to our clients who have to deal with them.”
This turn of events was also covered in an article from Law.com. Congrats to Rick. Now he can expose and depose the other Niros of the world and even get paid for it.
From patent trolls tracker to patent trolls buster.
The world need more ‘regulators’ like him.
Software Patents from Hell
Ugly, ugly, ugly.
It’s appalling to see just what’s perceived as patentable these days. The company that invented GPL circumvention (video, more about it in [1, 2]) continues to be part of the problem. It adopts intellectual monopolies as a business model. Here is the latest from this case:
Dish plans to sustain legal fight with TiVo
[...]
“You know, I know this case inside and out,” Ergen said in a conference call with analysts Monday. “We have changed that intellectual property in a way we don’t violate (TiVo’s patent) anymore. I’m just stubborn enough to say, ‘Why am I going to pay for something that we don’t violate?’ ”
The original complaint alleges defendants Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks and Aruba Networks infringe the ‘118 Patent by making, using or selling wireless Internet access systems which utilize captive portal techniques to block or redirect HTTP requests.
Virtually all networking/routing equipment rendered “guilty” in one fell swoop?
It still seems rather amusing (if not twisted) that some patent system supporters are trying to convince the world Google would be harmed by an absence of software patents. Instead, it seems increasingly obvious that it would only serve to help Google, who is a regular target of questionable patent infringement lawsuits. Take the latest such case as an example. A company by the name of Web Tracking Solutions, which ironically enough, doesn’t appear to have much of a web presence (if any), has sued Google for patent infringement, claiming that its patent on third-party on-line accounting systems is being violated by Google’s AdSense offering.
Arti K. Rai (Duke University School of Law) has posted Building a Better Patent System: Facially Neutral Standards with Disparate Impact (Houston Law Review, Vol. 45, 2008) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Prompted by persistent complaints, particularly from the information and communication technology (ICT) industries, about the dangers allegedly posed by strong patents of poor quality, both the legislative and judicial branches have recently made attempts at patent reform.
To increase the digital economy in different countries myriad firms engage in costly R & D activities to forth innovative software effort due to the fact that achievement of competitive help. This paper covers eight countries the most developed software industry in the in every respect US and than after Europe, UK, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, India, and Israel. These countries are having its own standard to grant software Patents, the laws followed not later than these countries are distinctly outlined one by one.
Trademark (In)Sanity in the USPTO
The problems of the USPTO run deeper than just patents. It’s more industry-oriented than logic-oriented or economy-oriented. It too easily obeys the requirements of individual companies and thus loses sight of its original goals. The Dell “Cloud Computing” debacle, which was mentioned here just very briefly, remains inconclusive — for now.
Dell had received near-final approval for its trademark application of the term “cloud computing,” but the US Patent and Trademark Office canceled its “Notice of Allowance” on Tuesday and changed the status to “returned to examination.”
This means that there are still some Clouds [pun] of uncertainty over the use of the term “cloud computing”. Watch this:
Dell’s filing described the term as “Custom manufacture of computer hardware for use in data centers and mega-scale computing environments for others.” Dell also owns the URL cloudcomputing.com.
We’ve done a quick Whois.Net lookup and here’s what it coughed out:
Registrant:
Dell Inc.
Dell Inc.
One Dell Way MS 8033
Round Rock TX 78682
US
dnsadmin@dell.com +1.5127283500 Fax: +1.5122833369
Domain Name: cloudcomputing.com
Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com
Administrative Contact:
Dell Domain Administrative Contact
Dell Inc.
One Dell Way MS 8033
Round Rock TX 78682
US
dnsadmin@dell.com +1.5127283500 Fax: +1.5122833369
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Wade Sullivan
Dell Inc.
One Dell Way
Round Rock TX 78682
US
dnstech@dell.com +1.5127288565 Fax: +1.5127286024
Created on..............: 2007-02-28.
Expires on..............: 2010-02-28.
Record last updated on..: 2008-02-21.
Domain servers in listed order:
ns1.us.dell.com
ns3.us.dell.com
ns4.us.dell.com
ns5.us.dell.com
ns2.us.dell.com
It’s hopefully clear to see that this domain was registered long after the term “cloud computing” had been in common use. Dana Blankenhorn asks: Has Dell lost its mind?
Dell did not succeed in the 1990s as an intellectual property company. It succeeded by delivering precisely what buyers wanted, with bulletproof quality, at the lowest possible price.
In an open source world these are still the keys to success. Not intellectual property. Precision, value, quality.
Dell seems to be following Microsoft’s footsteps. In difficult time, it strives to capitalise on imaginary property. █
his seems like a sensitive subject, so it’s worth beginning with a clarification that the author hasn’t bias against Ubuntu (used it since the first version, alongside other GNU/Linux distributions). The decision from Dell to sell PCs with GNU/Linux preinstalled was fantastic too and it opened the door to similar offers from other competing OEMs.
“There are no easy solutions here and it is perhaps why selling machines with no operating system and without the taxation should be needed.”The relationship between Microsoft, Novell and Dell is mysterious and very little is publicly known about the financial arrangement between Dell and Canonical. Nevertheless, every now and then, some people carry on complaining about the price of Ubuntu PCs from Dell. They are sometimes more expensive than equivalents with Microsoft Windows or are delivered without bonuses (hidden value).
On the face of it, one low-key addition to the latest expansion from Dell (availability of Ubuntu 8.04[.x]) is “licensed codecs”, where license is a fancier term for the payment to acquire binaries — or rather the permission to taint the GNU/Linux distribution with them. It seems unnecessary to revisit the endless debate about the harms of proprietary software, including such codecs especially where they are acquired in this fashion.
This nugget of information was made a little more apparent in the following article.
Dell began to address those problems with the 7.10 release by adding legal support for DVD playback. With the 8.04 release, Dell is going a step further and will be adding licensed codecs for common audio and video formats.
There are several issues here. Firstly, the price of GNU/Linux can be controlled (elevated) above the cost of proprietary software simply because files encoded in a certain way are spread among people. These are different (and legal) ways of obtaining such codecs.
In the case of Dell, you do not get any choice but to pay for proprietary software (preinstalled even) which is costly and essentially pays Microsoft for software patents, probably even in Europe.
There are no easy solutions here and it is perhaps why selling machines with no operating system and without the taxation should be needed. It’s called unbundling and it’s a state where people are permitted to just buy bare hardware from the Big Vendors. Microsoft fights this fiercely using daemonisation terms like “naked” (as in “naked PCs”).
Ubuntu on Dell PCs is not free. Not gratis and not libre. They seem to be turning it into another Linspire and that won’t help Linux (where the sense of freedom is diluted) or promote the advantages of Free software. GNU/Linux does not ‘win’ if it simply devolves into another OS X for wider acceptance. █
Microsoft may have given up on its old strategy. See the previous post about a 
