[unrev-II] "He who controls the bootloader"

From: Henry van Eyken (vaneyken@sympatico.ca)
Date: Sat Sep 08 2001 - 08:34:07 PDT

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    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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