The trolls and astroturfers are fond of saying GNU/Linux cannot cut it in the market and that customers demand that other OS. Here is proof to the contrary. In 2002, HP was selling 3% of their PCs with GNU/Linux, particularly to white-box OEMs. M$ persuaded them to stop that by offering $30 per PC incentive. Did they let the market decide? Nope. They cut out choice for the consumer for selfish reasons.
“South East Asia. HP discontinued its Linux SKUs beginning on November 18th. This is based on joint marketing effort that spans six months to promote low cost Windows SKU’s with $30 extra channel incentives that focus on white box resellers. The goal is to enable the whitebox resellers to offer HP branded PCs instead of naked PCs.
…
HP ships today ~20k Linux per month World Wide vs 10k six months ago. We estimate HP will ship up to 45k Linux a month Summer 03 – 3% of HP’s overall PC volume. The growth is generated by a world wide effort to target White Box volume which mainly ship without legal OS. HP has in the last 6 months created Linux Desktop PC sku’s in 20+ new countries across all regions, including most recently the US.”
These are from Comes v M$ documents published on Groklaw. see TFA.
Again, I claim that if their product were superior, M$ would not have to pay people to push it. GNU/Linux was doing very well back then, 3% of HPs PCs, but a campaign by M$ to block production held it back. HP was enjoying 100% per annum growth in the GNU/Linux shipments. Isn’t that acceptance by the market? Isn’t that what the customer wants? So, here we are six years later and these trolls still claim GNU/Linux is on only 1% of PCs. Liars.
In the long run, it will not matter. GNU/Linux will have its share and that other OS will not have a monopoly. The delays M$ has induced have been a theft of billions of dollars per year for half a decade. It could be the crime of the century except evil has no limits. People, wake up! M$ is using the money you pay them to preserve monopoly and high prices. Stop showering M$ with money.
0 Responses to “Let the Market Decide…”