bundling thoughts

[Paul_Melson@keykertusa.com]

>I'm not sure that's a fair statement.  Debian includes as many
>web browsers, for instance, as anyone cares to package.  It's not
>really "bundling" if you include everything available.  (Only a
>certain number will fit on the first CD-ROM, though, of course.)

I would agree insofaras there are different degrees[1] of bundling 
software.  Microsoft is guilty of unfair business practices not because 
they ship IE with Windows, nor because they didn't ship Netscape with 
Windows, but because with certain Win9x and NT releases it was impossible 
(or at least incredibly difficult) to uninstall IE.  That's the problem I 
have with their take on bundling.  But to expect OS vendors to go back to 
the days of DOS where you get just the bare bones OS is silly, and if 
legislated would hurt Open Source software distribution far more than it 
would hurt any of the commercial vendors, especially at this stage of the 
game.

PaulM