[Cialug] Groklaw article

[Jim Asbille]

Linux on Netbooks: The Smoking Gun - Updated
2Xs<http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090619161307529>from
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If you have been having trouble finding Linux on a netbook, you can stop
wondering why. I suspected it was being monopoly-crushed. Here's the smoking
gun <http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=4311#more-4311>, at last, thanks
to Dana Blankenhorn of ZDNet, who attended a press conference at Computex
and asked the right question:

Later, at a press conference sponsored by TAITRA, the Taiwan trade
authority, I asked executive director Walter Yeh (third from left in this
picture) about where the Linux went.

He passed the question to Li Chang (to the right in the picture), vice
president of the Taipei Computer Association.

Chang mentioned a press conference yesterday where Google announced an
Android phone to be made by Acer. But then he put it to me straight.

"In our association we operate as a consortium, like the open source
consortium. They want to promote open source and Linux. But if you begin
from the PC you are afraid of Microsoft. They try to go to the smart phone
or PDA to start again."

Taiwanese OEMs would love an alternative to Windows, but the sale comes
first, before production. The chicken comes first. And since the chicken
belongs to Microsoft, the penguin is helpless here.

Mystery solved. Totally blatant. Does this not give legs to Charlie
Demerjian's report, MS steps on a
Snapdragon<http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/06/12/ms-steps-snapdragon/>?
It appears Snapdragon on Asus is just the most recent horse to fall down
shot in the starting gate and then get dragged off the track.

So next time you hear Microsoft bragging that people *prefer* their software
to Linux on netbooks, you'll know better. If they really believed that,
they'd let the market speak, on a level playing field.

If I say my horse is faster than yours, and you says yours is faster, and we
let our horses race around the track, that establishes the point. But if you
shoot my horse, that leaves questions in the air. Is your horse *really*
faster? If so, why shoot my horse?


-- 
Jim Asbille, MSM
registered Linux user number 388067

"Failure is not an option.  It's a standard feature of Windows and is
bundled into the Operating System for your convenience, at no additional
charge."
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