[SATLUG] Dell Hope

[Brad Knowles]

On 6/1/07, herb cee wrote:

>  Will this hurt do you think?
>  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6710327.stm

Hurt Dell?  Yes.  Help Dell?  Maybe, but only in the longer run.

>  I think kind of scary for Ubuntu

Nah, not so much.  Ubuntu's biggest problem is that there's a lot of 
stuff they're shipping default out-of-the-box that violates a bunch 
of copyrights and patents here in the US, but because they're an 
overseas organization it's hard for US companies to sue them.  And 
because of the way they're organized, it's hard for anyone to get to 
the real money behind the project (Mark Shuttleworth).

It's easy to understand why they do this -- it's real nice when your 
media players are installed by default, and when they play all your 
various different types of media by default.


But as they start picking up more people here in the US, and 
especially more commercial customers, I can just hear Novell, 
Microsoft, and others licking their chops -- they could get some real 
money out of Dell if they named them as a co-defendant in a 
copyright/patent validation suit, and plenty of hardware 
manufacturers would join that on the side of the prosecution -- just 
to hurt Dell.

HP and Gateway couldn't be happier if Dell was forced into bankruptcy 
because of a huge lawsuit, so they'd provide *lots* of assistance to 
help make that happen.

Then the real backfire is going to happen.  Mom & Pop shops are going 
to get hit with RIAA-like tactics for using Ubuntu, even though it 
was pre-installed for them by Dell.  And a lot of people are going to 
get burned for trying Linux for the first time, which drives the 
customers right back into the hands of Microsoft -- and Novell, if 
you want a sanctioned version of Linux.


If Dell had announced that they'd ship Red Hat or SuSE, I think they 
would have been okay.  Even CentOS could probably have gotten through 
on Red Hat's coattails.

Maybe Linspire or Xandros, if they wanted a more dumbed-down interface.

But because of the copyright & patent issues, none of these vendors 
can offer what it was that Dell wanted, which was a really 
spectacular user experience out-of-the-box plus all the advanced 
Debian-enabled bells & whistles that they could get with Ubuntu.

So, now we're screwed.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>, Consultant & Author
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
Slides from Invited Talks: <http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4>

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