This refers to an exceedingly important piece by Scot Hacker. It shows where the U.S. Department of
Justice failed in its case against Microsoft by not addressing the issue of abusing its bootloader
monopoly. They wanted a stronmg case centered on the browser wars and not distract from that by the
more important issue of Microsoft's control over the hardware market.
Scot Hacker, an afficionado of the Be operating system and author of the "BeOS Bible," had a
conversation with the CEO of Be Inc., which just sold out for a song to Palm. Important matters came
to light. Here is a glimpse:
"You and I can't read the license because Microsoft classifies it as a 'trade secret.' The license
specifies that any machine which includes a Microsoft operating system must not also offer a
nonMicrosoft operating system as a boot option. In other words, a computer that offers to boot into
Windows upon startup cannot also offer to boot into BeOS or Linux. The hardware vendor does not get
to choose which OSes to install on the machines they sell — Microsoft does."
For the full "must read":
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1115/byt20010824s0001/0827_hacker.html
Henry
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