[Coco] RE: [Color Computer] Linux a cousin to OS-9

[Mike Pepe]

Basil,

Not to continue this off-topic rant, but you toss around Microsoft and 
monopoly like it's some kind of "fact".

Microsoft is not a monopoly: Sorry to burst your bubble.

A monopoly was, say, Bell Telephone in the US before it was broken up. 
You wanted a telephone? You had to buy Bell's telephone and service or 
you yelled out the window; there was no choice. Same goes for Standard 
Oil and some of the other classic examples from history. Even your 
electric company is a monopoly. (even if it's been "deregulated") That 
doesn't stop you from buying a big diesel generator, parking it in your 
back yard and cutting yourself off from the grid.

Microsoft was never really a monopoly. If you wanted a computer, you 
could buy one. Sure the store-bought machines probably all had DOS or 
Windows on them, but Microsoft couldn't stop you from buying the parts 
off the shelf and building your own PC without their cruft pre-loaded on 
it. You could then be free to load whatever you want, or if you're 
really good, write something yourself and run that.

Additionally, Microsoft always had some sort of competition, be it from 
Novell, Coherent, IBM, BSDI, or in more recent (heh) days from Linux, 
FreeBSD, etc. In that sense they were never a monopoly. No more so than, 
say, Microware being the only source of OS-9, or Tandy forcing you to 
run Color BASIC when you hit the power switch on your CoCo.

Just because they're big and powerful doesn't mean they're a monopoly. 
Nobody from Redmond is pointing a gun at my head and telling me what I 
should run on my PC.

-Mike


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