bundling thoughts

[Paul_Melson@keykertusa.com]

>First of all I agree that Microsoft is violating laws by bundling its 
software
>products with its operating system. It builds an anti-competitive 
advantage for
>them. The only way this should be allowed is if competitors are as well 
allowed
>to deliver their products pre-installed or even pre-delivered (on the MS
>install CD).
>
>Overall I think this is not manageable and MS should not be allowed to 
bundle
>anything but just sell their cut down OS and deliver any additional 
software on
>extra CD to be installed by the user.

Allow me to play devil's advocate here, for a moment.  Other than some 
embedded OS's, "bundling" is a standard practice, especially among Linux 
distributions.  The idea that you would have to individually download and 
install (or, applying this to commercial software, purchase) each utility 
and application individually in order to make your system usable, let 
alone robust, is unappetizing at best.  Why should Microsoft be forced to 
do something that no other software vendor, commercial or otherwise, is 
required to do?  If the playing field is evened by stripping OS's of their 
value-add software, the results will be absurd.  Imagine having to place 
an order for your AIX or Solaris image updates and individually order each 
of the daemons you want to run. 


>Here is why. Now Kodak is powerful and has the ability to force Microsoft 
to
>the above concession. And now AOL and Real want in on the deal. Then it 
is
>Norton and then McAfee and then god knows whatever company. And who do 
you see
>left out? FSF. 

>From a strictly profiteering standpoint, can you add value to (or at least 
charge more for) a product suite that includes software that is otherwise 
freely available?  Probably not.


That said, I'm as tired of paying lots of money for inferior products just 
because they are part of this undocumented global "standard" as I am of 
seeing BSODs and having to buy twice the hardware for half the work that 
another platform could do.  Let's hope for large-scale backlash. 

PaulM