Linked by Amjith Ramanujam on Thu 7th Aug 2008 17:25 UTC, submitted by SBW
It seems Lenovo is being selective in which markets get Linux on its new range of IdeaPad netbooks. "People in most markets Lenovo serves, including Singapore, China and the UK, will be offered the company's new IdeaPad S10 with either Microsoft Windows XP or a Linux OS, but Australian and US computer buyers will only be offered Windows XP according to Lenovo."
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Member since:
2008-08-11
United States has some interesting trademark and copyright laws, which Microsoft uses to exclude competitors.
For example, retailers must license the rights to use the Microsoft trademarks and logos, and one of the conditions of that license is that they must get Microsoft's prior written approval before taking any action that might "damage the brand".
This was how Microsoft prevented IBM from being able to sell OS/2 and forced them to accept Windows 95 exclusively. The retailers were told that if they put an OS/2 machine right next to a Windows machine, it would damage the Microsoft brand (since Warp 4.0 was much more impressive in it's capabilities). As a result, the retailers were told that if they turned on a PC with OS/2 on the display shelf, they would have to stop using the Microsoft brands. This meant that they would have to turn off all of the computers on the the display floor.
In other countries, this would be considered collusion, and retailers who excluded competitors could become codefendents with Microsoft in a collusion lawsuit.
Corel licensed their Linux to a number of motherboard manufacturers, offering it for 50 cents per copy. They were prepared to sue the OEMs for collusion when Microsoft staged a proxy war and had the CEO overthrown.
Several motherboard makers are now offering "Linux in Flash" on their motherboards, and again, OEMs who willingly engage in conspiring to exclude competitors such as Red Hat, Ubuntu, or Novell, could find themselves in a similar situation of being named as codefendents in collusion lawsuits.
In some countries, like the US, it's harder to prove collusion. In other countries, simply the act of effectively excluding a competitor who has already contracted a presence (via the motherboard makers) is enough to consitute a provable collusion case.