title: Monopolies ne Choice link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/monopolies-ne-choice/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 306 created: 2009/06/20 14:03:50 created_gmt: 2009/06/20 14:03:50 comment_status: open post_name: monopolies-ne-choice status: publish post_type: post

Monopolies ne Choice

Groklaw has the scoop on the real reason there are no more Linux netbooks in Linux on Netbooks: The Smoking Gun.

If you have been having trouble finding Linux on a netbook, you can stop wondering why. I suspected it was being monopoly-crushed.

The evidence is in this quote from Li Chang, President of the Taipei Computer Association, published by CNET reporter Dana Blankenhorn, who asked the basic question, “where the Linux went” when it came to netbooks:

In our association we operate as a consortium, like the open source consortium. They want to promote open source and Linux. But if you begin from the PC you are afraid of Microsoft.

As Groklaw’s PJ puts it:

So next time you hear Microsoft bragging that people prefer their software to Linux on netbooks, you’ll know better. If they really believed that, they’d let the market speak, on a level playing field.

If I say my horse is faster than yours, and you says yours is faster, and we let our horses race around the track, that establishes the point. But if you shoot my horse, that leaves questions in the air. Is your horse really faster? If so, why shoot my horse?

I could go on here about how corporate, not national, politics has created and sustained Microsoft’s monopoly dominance since before the turn of this century, despite the staggering costs that continued reliance on the company’s products involve. But the same could have been said of AT&T’s monopoly position up into the 1980’s.

We all know how that turned out.

Copyright 2004-2019 Phil Lembo