From: "Geo." 

"Joe Barr"  wrote in message
news:pan.2003.05.20.23.27.34.366084{at}austin.rr.com...

> Well, here is the reasoning as I understand her.  A monopoly can use
> exclusionary pricing (giving the product away, for example) to prevent
> competition from ever establishing a foothold in the market.  In this
> case, it would be MS illegally maintaining their monopoly.

that would make sense if the competition was charging a price, but when the
competition is from a free product, monopoly or not, you should be allowed
to match their price. If you want to complain about preload deals or some
other form of distribution where market share can be used as an advantage
fine but straight price to price competition doesn't to me seem to be
unfair use of market share.

> It might well be good for those very few MS customers who got the deep
> discounts, but it would be bad for consumers because it would prevent the
> formation of a free marketplace.

If you want to require a standard price structure (ie no special deals) that's fine.

> And of course you still don't get the free part of Linux, but I'm not
> going to explain it to you again.

I get the free, I downloaded Knoppix without a credit card, it's free. As
for the other free, I don't agree, if it's got a license agreement that
says something other than "this is public domain" then it's not
free. (I don't see the license agreement as bad, I just don't see it as
free, there are restrictions.)

Geo.

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