[PLUG] Not Windows or OS X

Aaron Burt aaron at bavariati.org
Mon Nov 26 18:18:05 UTC 2007


On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 09:21:03AM -0800, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Nov 2007, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> 
> > A brief note from the newspaper:  "... the $199 Everex computer, sold
> > online at Walmart.com and select stores.  This computer runs on an
> > open-source operating system, not Microsoft Windows or Apple OS X ..."

Heh.  If it doesn't buy ads in the paper, it doesn't have a name.

> This was no groklaw.net, too. Apparently the OS is provided by
> Linspire, one of those "linux" distributors who signed up for
> Microsoft's protection scheme, so it's not considered true linux. 

Hm?  I don't understand how a Linux distro could not be "true".  Can you
expand on that?

> You do not get the source code -- even if you ask 

Really?  Not like Astaro, who merely makes it as difficult and expensive
as the GPL possibly permits?

> -- and there are changes made that make it incompatible with other
> linux distributions.

I think that's true for all distros, to some extent.  Isn't it based on
Debian, like Ubuntu?

> You're locked in to them. There's more but I don't recall all of it.
> And, I'll bet you thought that protection rackets were declared
> illegal years ago.

No racket ever goes out of style.  That said, I don't understand how
vendor lock-in equates to a protection racket.  (MS Office encryption,
especially coupled with TPM, on the other hand...)




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