Quote:
Originally Posted by elija I don't think Microsoft are a monopoly, after all I am typing this in my non-ms browser running
under my non-ms operating system. There are alternatives and with a true monopoly there will only
be one. |
I must agree. The definition of monopoly, like so many other terms, seems to be slowly falling victim to revisionist interpretation. But I still hold fast to the pure definition. The one that OED, Webster, and others use. And by that definition, MS is not a monopoly. While they engage in a number of monopolistic, anti-competitive behaviours, they haven't crossed the magic line into true monopoly. And the factors don't exist for them to become one. The chiefs at Microsoft, for all their greed & arrogance, are not completely stupid. It's for very good reason that Apple is still around, when they could have been swallowed whole back in the mid-90's. MS doesn't want Linux to go away either. (too many good ideas, ripe for co-opting) They just want to marginalize everyone else, and would be tremendously thrilled if the whole FOSS concept would just go away.
qv