RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)

[Petro <petro@playboy.com>]

At 3:24 PM -0500 10/4/98, Jim Choate wrote:
>Forwarded message:
>
>> Date: Sun, 04 Oct 1998 12:42:58 -0700
>> From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
>> Subject: RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
>
>> Microsoft is not a monopoly.  In servers, where much of their
>> income comes from,
>
>Malarky, MS makes the vast majority of their money off end-user and single
>machine licenses. Look at their quarterly or yearly earning statements.

	Ummm...Ever hear of this little start up in Cupertino called Apple?
Has a couple billion in the bank, net profits last quarter larger than Dell
&etc.

>> Linux is eating their lunch,
>
>It is certainly growing but the fact is that by a factor of orders of
>magnitude commercial Unix'es own that market. When it comes to mission
>critical servers Solaris, HP, & AIX own the market still.

	So M$ STILL doesn't have a monopoly.

>> and the
>> desktop is under continual threat.  For a monopoly to be a
>> monopoly, you not only have to have most of the market, you
>> have to have some means of excluding others, which Microsoft
>> manifestly does not.
>
>Not from a lack of trying on their part and the fact that federal regulators
>stepped in before it became totaly regulated.

	Crap, the Feds stepped in just as market forces were starting to
weaken Microsoft. Linux is starting to eat into the server market, Apple is
coming back out of it's slump, more and more people are starting to realize
home bad M$ is.


>> You are totally deluded.  None of these are examples of
>> monopoly,
>
>Certainly they were. Each and every example listed (and many more) were
>industries which were controlled by a small number of companies whose share
>in the total market was squeezing out competition. The results would have
>been a growing number of buyouts and thinning of competition to the point
>that only one or two companies would have survived.

	Other than the Railroads, which have already been shown to be a
government CREATED monopoly, how was the Aircraft Industry a monopoly? The
GARMENT INDUSTRY?

	Come on Jim, "Put Up Or Shut Up".

> except for the railroad industry where government
>> intervention was for the purpose of creating monopoly, not
>> preventing it.
>
>In the aircraft industry for example, while the number of riders was growing
>very quickly there was a concommitent increase in end-user ticket prices
>that was way out of line with the increased cost of business operations as
>well as a decrease in the overall safety of the industry which was
>exemplified by a increase in the number of air crashes and aircraft who
>couldn't pass maintenance inspections yet continued to fly.

	Doesn't sound like a monopoly issue as much as a saftey issue.
Nothing there looks like a conspiracy to prevent other from entering the
market.


>> The garment and food packing industries were and are a huge
>> network of innumerable tiny shops,
>
>All working for about 5 or 6 companies who actlualy marketed and distributed
>the items. Just get a Dallas Texas phone book for that period (it's a
>distribution hub for the clothing/garment industry even today).

	That is still 5 or 6 companies in competition.

>> and the aircraft industry
>> had several big companies in fierce competition.=20
>
>Yep, in the mid-50's there were like 5 national/international aircraft
>operators and the number of commercial avaition manufacturers selling to the
>national and international carrier market was like 3. There were smaller
>companies like Ryan for example but they were owned by the larger companies
>and eventualy merged into the regular operations.

	What barriers OTHER THAN REGULATORY/LEGAL did they raise to
competitors?
--
petro@playboy.com----for work related issues. I don't speak for Playboy.
petro@bounty.org-----for everthing else.      They wouldn't like that.
                                              They REALLY
Economic speech IS political speech.          wouldn't like that.