Am 16. Nov, 2007 schwätzte keith smith so:

> Okay, however other than limited academic programs I have not seen M$ give away the OS.  I think if they did that would be proof that they are using their monopoly power to keep and gain even more market share.
>
> So lets hope they do give away the OS.

They do. Through Gates' foundation. Through lawsuit settlements. For
marketing. m$ uses OS licenses to pay debts. When it does this for
publicly owned debt, e.g. lawsuits brought by a government entity, it
rips off the taxpaying public.

Trump gets government subsidies for his whacky ideas.

The oil companies complain about the cost of oil and want federal money
to holp recover from Katrina as eXXon sets new worldwide records for
corporate earnings.

The RIAA paid a settlement by donating old stock they couldn't sell to
public libraries. Anybody need 50,000 copies of "A Debbie Boone Groundhog
Day"?

The airlines get paid day in and day out to have certain parts of their
fleets ready to be used for the military in a time of war, then complain
when they actually have to turn over aircraft as required by the contract.

Toy manufacturers keep feigning surprise when the media finds out that
some toy is unsafe.

Many corporations intentionally don't do the right thing in order to
create profits. m$ is definitely knee deep in that movement and have
billions and billions dollars as a result. The government isn't going to
require m$ give it back or pay fines.

So...

1. We can complain about illegal and unethical business practices. It
won't get anything changed. If people dying due to bad toys and drugs
doesn't really get change don't count on people caring about the m$ tax.

2. We push for requirement of Free and Open Standards. Suddenly we find
we can get assistance from big companies like IBM, Google, Intel and AMD
and from small companies that have had their data held hostage by m$
proprietary formats.

3. We can continue working on, supporting and promoting Free Software that
absolutely rocks over the proprietary software equivalents. This is how I
think we'll have the biggest impact, especially if we can get people and
governments using Free and Open Formats[0].

Buy products that support Free Software and Open Standards. If you find a
way, let the companies know that you bought the product due to its support
of Free Software and Open Standards. Avoid buying from companies that
continuously threaten Free Software and Open Standards.

Donate to organizations like the Free Software Foundation and Software
Freedome Lay Center. Donate to Free Software projects via organizations
like the GNOME, KDE and Apache foundations or via 'donate now' mechanisms
or whatever on project web sites.

Donate by submitting thourough bug reports. Donate by providing patches if
you can.

Donate by helping user groups have interesting events that will help
local ground roots support for Free Software. A good way to do that is
bring people to the Free Software Stammtisch, this Tuesday, or to PLUG's
annual end of year party next month. The latter should be easier as there
will be cheesecake :).

Does Apple care if a bunch of geeks don't go buy an ipod? No. They don't
even care if the geeks don't update to the newest one every 6 months like
everyone else. They might care if we all buy and iAudio, which advertises
ogg and flac support as well as support for GNU/Linux, or an insignia
player, which advertises ogg and flac support, especially if we get our
music downloads from www.Magnatune.com rather than some vendor-lock-in
music site.

[0] Yesterday I verified with the state's new information security officer
that they understand GNU/Linux is not Windows. I also got confirmation
from the head security officer for the department of health that they use
a lot of *NIX and have some GNU/Linux geeks playing with stuff. Now we
need to find out who's on the proposed project oversight committees and
get them to understand the benefits of Free and Open Standards.

ciao,

der.hans
-- 
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