From: discar@nosc.mil (Joe Discar)
Subject: Re: ftc and ms
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 21:41:00 GMT

In article <1992Dec22.185305.59162@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (STACY JOHN BEHRENS) writes:
>In article <1992Dec21.213006.9278@nosc.mil>, discar@nosc.mil (Joe Discar) writes
>>Ah, but the vendors aren't forced to stick with the contract.  The agreement
>>generally says "we will supply product X at a cost of D only under these
>>terms."  The vendors, at any time, can say "well, we don't want to do this..."
>>and simply pay more money for MS-DOS (later in your post, you allude to this).
>
>Really?  How many of these contracts have you seen?  None would be a likely
>guess.  That said however, these contracts appear, from the outside at least
>to be a bit more binding than that.

One.  I've reviewed the Multiple License Pack agreement, and subsequently
turned it down... why?  Simply because I, as a vendor, don't "move" enough
systems to make it worthwhile--and my business in general is to provide
the best solutions to a client... and the solutions are not always
MS-DOS based.

How many have you reviewed?

>
>
>(some stuff deleted)
>
>>>MS knows that MS-DOS is what would
>>>probably be loaded anyway, but instead they want to force the OS on
>>>to the minority of people who would rather have another OS.
>>
>>They don't "force" the OS on anybody.  As far as I know, the hard disk is
>>read/write--and the end user could quite easily reformat the drive and put
>>another OS in DOS's place.  Vendors would be quite willing to install another
>>DOS on the machine, even--what they may not do is lower the price of
>>the system even though you decide not to buy DOS or Windows... but this is
>>the vendor's choice, and includes the decision that the price of the
>>system is fixed (i.e., the prediction is that 100 systems will be sold at
>>a cost of X... therefore the system price should be X*100*margin).
>>
>
>No MS doesn't hold a gun to anyones head, and say "look into our eyes, you are
>getting very sleepy.  You will bundle only what we tell you too..."  Of course
>they don't do that.  But they can make it so hard for a competitor to keep up
>with his competitors that he almost has to bundle the software, or lose
>business instead.  MS has deeper pockets than any software company save IBM.

Microsoft does not GIVE money to vendors (lord, if they did I would have
signed the agreement).  What they do is make it exquisitely inexpensive for
a vendor to acquire DOS and Windows under certain terms.  Consider it this
way, if instead of DOS, Microsoft was peddling Broccoli Juice (tm)--and
offered it under the same terms, it would hardly be successful because
the Vendor's CLIENTs wouldn't want Broccoli Juice.  The problem is that
the market, at this time, WANTS MS-DOS and Windows--which gives Microsoft
the leverage it needs to say "if you want the best price for Windows and
DOS..."

In other words, if the market DESIRED OS/2 more than DOS+Windows, and
IBM made a similar incentive, Vendors would be flocking to IBM's door
instead of Billy's.

>They can afford to use tactics like this, even though they don't get the same
>return they might if they used a higher price.  This used to happen a lot back
>in the earlier part of the century.  A big company like say Standard Oil,
>would go to gas stations and other places where oil and gas were sold and they
>would basically give them two options.  They could buy their gas only from
>Standard Oil or they would find themselves unable to compete because the big
>company would make things so much easier on their competitors that they simply
>couldn't afford to stay competitive.  They may not be holding a gun to
>someone's head, but the effect is still the same.

Well, sort of.  The problem is really that not many people (at this time)
really want OS/2... which is cheaper than the cost of DOS+Windows.  To use
your Standard Oil analogy, gas stations started turning to small 
comapnies such as Texaco for gas--severely cutting into Standard Oil's 
revenues.

The same could happen with IBM and Microsoft--as long as IBM's "gas" is
just as good as Microsoft's.  The real question though, is this: "Is it?"

>
>-- 
>Stacy John Behrens
>*===)-------------
>||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
>The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they
>serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have not
>legitimacy.                                  [Albert Einstein]
>||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Joe
My opinions.  By the way, I like your sig quote.

Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.advocacy:11366 comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy:3607