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Why We Can't Just Get Along: The Bootloader 513

Posted by timothy from the issues-to-raise dept.
mccormi writes: "Byte has an article from the BeOS perspective on why we don't see more dual boot machines from vendors. Browser anticompetitive complaints are nothing compared to what's happening with the bootloaders since the majority of people using computers will never have the know-how or courage to make an OS change."
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Why We Can't Just Get Along: The Bootloader More

Why We Can't Just Get Along: The Bootloader

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  • Read this article - Worths Gold (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eugenia Loli ( 250395 ) on Monday August 27, 2001 @06:44PM (#2223446) Journal
    Yes, before you start replying here, please READ that Byte article. It will show you what really happened with the Ms antitrust case in the issue of the "secret license", and it will explain one of the fundamendal and most important reasons why Be was driven out of business and BeOS never became mainstream.
    • That's funny. I thought that BeOS died because it was buggy, ill-supported, took 10 years to come to market, switched focus every two years to alienate it's users and developers and had no applications.

      Man, I can't believe how Bill Gates fooled me.

      • Re:Read this article - Worths Gold (Score:5, Informative)

        by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Monday August 27, 2001 @08:51PM (#2223881)
        Real funny. There are parts of BeOS that aren't particularly stable (like net_server) but the guts have always been solid. Saying that it is buggy is just plain false.

        Second, BeOS is probably just as well supported as Linux. There is a great user community, and I have yet to see the Linux equivilent of betips.net. Granted, commercial support on Linux is probably better, but given that BeOS runs a great deal of GNU code (like the entire CLI environment, for example) support on the application level is probably about the same.

        As for taking a long time to come to market, that's false as well. BeOS had a solid journeling FS long before ReiserFS came out. BeOS had a great desktop environment (proudly based on the Mac GUI) before KDE and GNOME ever got their acts together. It had sub 3ms audio latencies when the low latency patches were just a gleam in Ingo Molnar's eye. BeOS had technology in 1997 that Linux is just getting today. In another year or two, one will be able to say that Linux is the greatest media OS on the planet. At its current pace of development, there is no doubt about that. However, that level of development will only compare to what BeOS was in 1998.

        Enough with the focus shift BS. There have been two focus shifts in Be's history. First, they switched from IAs to desktops. Then, 8 years later, they switched back to IAs. It was a last ditch effort to save the company, and it gave people hope for a few more months. The focus shift was just a symptom of the fact that Be was on its way out, not a cause.

        Yes, Be had a lack of applications. That's the problem that any alternative OS that doesn't use X must endure. OSS-types talk about freedom, but what about those who want to be free of the shackles of X?

        Linux types always get mean about BeOS. My theory is that BeOS is the only thing out there that could possibly challenge Linux for technological supremacy. The BSD folks have already settled for the server market, and if WinXP is any indication of the future, it looks like MS won't be any competition. No, BeOS was the only thing that could have foiled Linux on the desktop. Well, the cornoation can preceed as scheduled. There are no more troublesome pretenders to the OS throne...

    • I disagree.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by FallLine ( 12211 )
      While I find article presents a compelling example of MS' all too common anticompetitive behavior, it does not really provide a credible explanation for BeOS' failure. BeOS may well be a superior OS, in and of itself, but that is not sufficient to attract customers. For instance, the lack of software and support can easily outweigh any benefit that any individual consumer could draw from increased stability and performance.

      In addition, I find it hard to believe that installing BeOS as a dual boot system is any greater an obstacle than the numerous other disincentives that present themselves -- especially when it is possible to design software for make the conversion riduculously simple. Dual booting means that you sacrifice useful HD space to both the partition and the OS files. You must learn how to use it. You must purchase much of the software, if it even exists, for BeOS, that you either already own or comes bundled with Windows (hardly an argument for MS), at least if you wish to use it in that capacity. You may have to contend with compatibility issues. The Cost of BeOS itself. And the lists goes on. Any one of these could be sufficient reasons NOT to use BeOS, or any other OS, without that particular form of monopolistic behavior.

      Although, MS has no reasonable excuse for its behavior, the writing was on the wall people. All Be's escapade has done is to demonstrate to some, those that believe BeOS to be a clearly superior OS, that a technically superior OS can fail. I do not understand how anyone familiar with the industry could not understand this. Certainly MS' monopoly position played a significant role in Be's demise, but moreso in other ways (e.g., the Applications && OS symbiotic relationsip--although much harder to quantify). Furthermore, even without MS' monopoly position, it is not necessarily impossible for a superior product (which is what Be is presumed to be) to fail.

  • Isn't this trial material? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sllort ( 442574 ) on Monday August 27, 2001 @06:47PM (#2223460) Homepage Journal
    You and I can't read the license because Microsoft classifies it as a "trade secret." The license specifies that any machine which includes a Microsoft operating system must not also offer a nonMicrosoft operating system as a boot option. In other words, a computer that offers to boot into Windows upon startup cannot also offer to boot into BeOS or Linux. The hardware vendor does not get to choose which OSes to install on the machines they sell -- Microsoft does.

    The obvious question here is: why didn't the DoJ use this as part of their anti-trust trial? Isn't this the most blatant example of monopoly leverage in existence?

    Most importantly, are there any copies of these "trade secret" OEM license agreements on file somewhere? Without some sort of public record, we pretty much have to take the author's word for it (not that I doubt him).

    As much as we'd like to create a technological circumvention for this, we can't. Because the people who are affected by this are the people who don't have enough computer knowledge to even know they have a choice. And Microsoft has, very intelligently, ensured that they never will.

    Innovation at it's finest.
    • Why can't M$FT be prosecuted for Denial of Service?

      If I install, let's say FreeBSD, then I install Windows, it will wipe out the FreeBSd boot manager (without asking), thus denying me the FreeBSD service. Why does M$ think they own my boot track?
      • Some os's do stupid things in the name of "convenience" that could be taken maliciously.

        Most people installing windows wouldn't know what the hell a bootsector even is. And I doubt you could explain it to them. "Detected an unknown bootsector. Maybe it's garbage. Or maybe it belongs to another operating system that needs it to boot. On the other hand we need it too. Abort, Ignore?"

        94% will be confused; of these 5% will flood tech support asking about "unknown operating systems". 4% (smart linux/bsd users) will know what you're talking about but the question is useless to them, since they have to work around it anyway. The last 2% (stupid linux/bsd users) will ignorantly click-thru, blow away their other os, and sue anyway.

    • If you read the article the author explains quite clearly why this evidence wasn't used.

      "The burning question, of course, is why Boies and Klein didn't want Gassée to testify on the bootloader issue, especially when it could have substantially helped their case? The answer provided to Gassée was that the case was by then already too well established. Including the bootloader issue would have meant rewriting many of the arguments and calling in a new collection of witnesses. In other words, it wasn't convenient for the U.S. government to get to the meat of the matter.... In addition, no PC OEM was willing to testify on bootloader issues...... Finally, Be didn't have the brand recognition that Netscape did; Netscape made for a much better poster child. "

      "If it smells, it's Chemistry, if it moves, it's Biology, and if it doesn't work, it's Physics"

    • Upgrade to BeOS for $1 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by volpe ( 58112 )
      Suppose an OEM wants to sell dual boot machines, but is afraid of Microsoft's wrath. What's to stop them from selling a computer with Windows-only pre-installed at time of sale, and offering to install BeOS afterwards for a nominal charge?
      • Actually, nothing whatsoever is stopping them from *shipping* dual boot systems at time of purchsase. Just don't sign on Microsoft's dotted line, pay a little more for Windows, then do whatever the hell you want.

        Why are we running Microsoft through the wringer on this one when it's the OEM's that voluntarily agreed in writing not to make dual boot systems? (yeah, yeah, don't answer, I know already - it's because it would all be perfectly legal if Microsoft wasn't Microsoft)
    • "we pretty much have to take the author's word for it (not that I doubt him). "

      Actually, I do doubt him. Can someone point to a trial transcript which claims the license is a Trade Secret?

      The DOJ clearly had access to the OEM license agreements as these were brought up in the trial with regards to modifying the OS to remove Internet Explorer.

      If this were the case, it would be evidence of exclusionary behavior that coincided with the previous consent decree preventing Microsoft from charging computer makers for DOS whether or not a computer shipped with it.

      So there I doubt him.

      Although I also agree that the DOJ lawyers were completely inept for bringing this case to trial the way they did. Browser? Oh good grief.
    • Most importantly, are there any copies of these "trade secret" OEM license agreements on file somewhere?

      I doubt you'll find an example of an OEM license. I imagine the NDA is truly onerous. But there are little hints [cnet.com] (http://news.cnet.com/news/0,10000,0-1005-201-3233 68-0,00.html) here and there:

      "If you are willing to give Microsoft a clear written assurance that the above will be implemented on all Compaq Presario machines within sixty (60) days of the date of this letter, Microsoft will withdraw its Notice of Intent to Terminate letter addressed to David Cabello and dated May 30, 1996 once such written assurance is received by Microsoft."

  • The revelation that Microsoft would hold a gun to their OEM's heads doesn't suprise me. Microsoft may not be the 'Great Satan', but their business practices are somewhat sinister, cloak and dagger, and monopilist.

    What surprises me is that some of the major hardware vendors would put up with this. Compaq, Dell and IBM? Without them to pre-load windows (which would happen if MS pulled their license) half of Window's market share would evaporate. It's true--few people would install their own OS. If MS pulled their license, why doesn't IBM or Compaq just install Linux for free and say to hell with Redmond?

    Maybe there's more to this than just the license thing. maybe Bill Gates has several CEO's families held hostage in the basement of his Redmond Complex....

    • If MS pulled their license, why doesn't IBM or Compaq just install Linux for free and say to hell with Redmond?

      I don't know why, but if IBM were even mildly interested in doing that, then OS/2 would still be a major player. Whatever the hell caused them to abandon that, is probably also still a factor in Linux-related decisions.

      • OS/2 was an IBM/Microsoft collaborative effort to produce a good, modern OS after Windows 3.0. But Microsoft played a dastardly trick. They convinced developers to develop for Windows 3.1 while OS/2 was being developed, giving the reason that OS/2 would run Windows 3.1 applications. But half-way through, MS walked away from the collaboration. IBM's hopes of sharing the market with Microsoft evaporated, while Microsoft got a better kernel, which they slapped a GUI on and called it Windows NT. In time, this kernel became Windows2K, while the other kernel based off Win3.1 became Win95, then Win98 and finally WinME (and no more).


        So who says MS only wrote one OS?

    • The OEMs won't drop Microsoft because everybody (/. company excluded) wants Windows. That's all they know. Go up to the typical 40-year old blue collar worker, and ask him what linux is...I tried it once, and the person told me that it was a type of China/silverware...

      If Dell says "no more windows", 95% of their customers are gonna jump ship. Both Dell and Microsoft know this...Microsoft may be evil, but they are definitely not stupid.
    • > What surprises me is that some of the major hardware vendors would put up with this.

      A classic case of taking the short-term easy route without regard for the long-term consequences.

      They are now completely beholden to Microsoft, and would have trouble changing their business plan to change that fact, if they did decide that they wanted to.

  • Linux is not free to ship on a system (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tim_maroney ( 239442 ) on Monday August 27, 2001 @06:50PM (#2223474) Homepage
    Linux is free. And yet there are no commercially available dual-boot machines on the market.... There is no other way to explain this phenomenon other than as a repercussion of the confidential Windows License under which every hardware vendor must do business.

    No, Linux is not free to the vendor. It requires an extra configurator setting, more system testing, documentation and support cost, installer and boot-time software development, inclusion of CD-ROMs, and a few gigabytes off the hard disk. If there's not customer demand for the feature there's no point in the extra cost for the system vendor.

    Tim
    • But the license is free. Most of the Windows installations I've used have been quite heavily customized anyway by the PC maker. For most standard desktop PC hardware Linux is about as straightforward to set up as Windows, if you know what you're doing. Most of the PC hardware I've ever dealt with took less time to get working under Linux than under Windows. ( the rest, of course, took weeks. ah well.)

      Forgive me from bringing up TCO here, but this applies too. A company like IBM or Dell can afford to run their own distro- or just an enhanced RedHat/Debian/whatever- and finally they can control what software is preinstalled, what icons show up, etc. And there will be no fee to any OS manufacturer. Long term, this is probably quite a bit less expensive than the bulk OEM Windows licenses.

      On the other hand, the Dells I've seen with Linux preinstalled appear to have shipped with the standard version of RedHat, i.e. $50, so there's not too much savings. I don't know what RedHat's deals with OEMs are- perhaps it's still cheaper than Windows, perhaps not. However, I'd guess the costs involved in setting up dual Windows/RedHat for all machines wouldn't be worth it, given the number of people who'd actually use the second OS.
    • Come on !

      Yes it needs some setting and testing for a new category of material, but one it's done just create an image and load it automatically in your thousands if not millions similar machines.

      Can you say economy of scale ?
    • extra configurator setting, more system testing

      Yes, Linux has to be installed and tested. This should not be a big problem for large manufacturers with standardized PC series, though.

      documentation and support cost

      These are not necessary, e.g. "Compaq machines come with Linux as a dual-boot option. A lot of documentation is included in the /usr/doc directories. However, we only give support for the Windows configuration of your machine. If you desire Linux support, we suggest you call Redhat and ask for the special-priced Compaq support package .."

      installer and boot-time software development

      This is part of the installation costs. These are short-term costs that reduce long-term installation costs.

      inclusion of CD-ROMs, and a few gigabytes off the hard disk.

      Irrelevant.

      If there's not customer demand

      There is no demand if there is no information. Marketing creates demands by spreading information, some false, some true. An OEM could theoretically market Linux as an additional feature, with the "no support" provision. But Microsoft's licensing coerces them into not doing it. These are practices of a monopoly that must be stopped.

  • GAG (Score:2, Informative)

    by matek ( 101962 )

    The BEST bootloader available right now is GAG [gnu.org]. Multiple OS's on multiple Primary partitions, the bootloader is able to fit into the bootsector itself, it fixes errors, it finds in bootsector etc. etc.
  • Before we get upset and assume that there is some sort of corporate conspiracy keeping multi-OS systems off the shelfs, it seems a more reasonable explination that most people simply would'nt want to deal with Two OSws.


    There are execptions, of course (for example, many of the readers here). But why would your average end user want to have to learn two (or more) seperate OSes?


    At best, out of the box multi-OS machines could satisfy a small niche market of hobbyists and power users, and I'm sure somewhere those would make up a large enough marketshare to support a couple of vendors.


    But me, personally, I'll keep BSD on my machine I made for BSD, and my Windows on my machine taylored for windows.

    • Before we get upset and assume that there is some sort of corporate conspiracy keeping multi-OS systems off the shelfs


      Nice try. The OEM licenses are a well-established fact and not a conspiracy, but business-as-usual for Microsoft. Whether or not consumers want multiple OS is besides the point. The point is that Microsoft is clearly abusing its monopoly to gain a strong competitive advantage over other operating systems. This abuse must stop ASAP.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • What I will say is that MS, even *if they are a monopoly and we assume so, has done nothing to prevent you, the user, from getting an alternate operating system. You, the user, are free to install anything you want on your machine.


          True, assuming that you, the user, are comfortable enough with computers to know how to install your own operating system. But you and I both know that doing so isn't a realistic option for most people--you might as well ask them to replace the carbeurator in their car.


          Microsoft has made sure the public does not have the option of buying a computer that dual-boots Windows and a non-Microsoft operating system, and that's what counts, not the hypothetical possibilities of what people could do if they were all computer geeks, which they surely aren't.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • You miss the point. The point is whether Joe Consumer knowingly makes this choice, or does not. Microsoft's history has always been to decrease, minimize and de-emphasize the fact that an active choice in this matter has to be made.


              Two roads diverged upon the road, but most people took the well-travelled one, becuase they didn't know that that treacherous looking one was a road and a viable one!

              • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                • You miss the point yet again. To "choose to be ignorant" is not the same as "ignorant of choices". MS makes use of the people who are ignorant of choices, by marketing to them, taking their money and using that to encroach upon others who choose otherwise.


                  For example: MS Word or Excel does not exist for Unix systems. If MS was only a software applications company, they would have seriously considered expanding their market. Even if they determined that the market was too insignificant for them there is an opportunity for them to license a port like Loki does of Civilization, for example. But they do not, which makes you wonder why they do not want the extra business.

        • Re:Perhaps because few would want them? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Eloquence ( 144160 ) on Monday August 27, 2001 @08:16PM (#2223761)
          I dont feel like getting into a MS monopoly argument, so I am not going to say that MS isnt a monopoly, even though I believe they are not (and that the courts will eventually agree with me).

          What a nice way to make a statement without having the facts or arguments to support it. "I don't feel like saying the Earth is flat, so I am not going to say it is, even though I believe it is, and most serious scientists will eventually agree with me."

          What I will say is that MS, even *if* they are a monopoly and we assume so

          What is a monopoly by your definition? Are 90% of the marketshare enough? 95%?

          has done nothing to prevent you, the user

          *beep* Wrong line of argument. Monopolies are not about direct coercion. Monopolies, while they do have immense market power, are not governments, otherwise they would be called governments. Monopolies, through accumulation of capital and mindshare, may be able to create a market in which it is impossible or very hard for competitors to thrive, even though this may be in the best interest of the consumers. Microsoft is such a monopoly.

          "Freedom of choice" arguments sound nice and are exactly the kind of rhetoric you would expect a Microsoft-propagandist to employ -- however, they are fundamentally flawed in that they omit an essential factor that determines our decisions: information. By being a monopoly, Microsoft has the advantage (and, rarely, the disadvantage) of being the focus of all media attention. And they have loads of money to spend on propaganda [tompaine.com], too. Your decision to use or not to use a Microsoft OS may be free of direct coercion, but it is certainly not free of manipulation. And because of the nature of an operating system, being the basis for all other software run on a computer, any program that is written exclusively for a Microsoft OS strengthens Microsoft's monopoly. Thus, any switchover can obviously only be gradual, with many people using two or more operating systems at the same time (which, incidentally, has been confirmed in a recent survey [heise.de] of 10000 Linux users, where only 38% used no other OS besides Linux -- even many professionals boot Windows NT or 2K together with Linux).

          Linux is now in a position where it can actually compete with Windows in most fields, even in spite of Microsoft's market domination (a fact which lends tremendous support to arguments for open, patent-free software development). But consumers know little about Linux because of Microsoft's media domination, and they can't give it a try easily because of Microsoft's coercive OEM licensing. These are clearly practices of a monopoly by any reasonable definition, and they make it hard for the little competition to gain market share. Whether such practices are illegal under US antitrust law, I cannot say -- I care more about morals than about law. On the basis of morals, I can see no reasonable argument why the kind of coercive OEM licensing Microsoft uses should be allowed.

        • News flash.

          If you want the abuse to stop, then DONT USE MICROSOFT PRODUCTS. EVER. PERIOD. END OF STORY.
          >>>>>>>>
          If you don't like the Standard Oil monopoly, stop using petroleum! If you don't like AT&T, stop using phones! If you don't like US Steel, stop using pots and trains and cars and shovels.

        • If you want the abuse to stop, then DONT USE MICROSOFT PRODUCTS. EVER. PERIOD. END OF STORY.
          MS can put anything they want in their software, and can install it any which way they want, with any conditions they want. If you don't like it, don't buy MS products.


          I wish it was that simple. I live MS free, but ever so often, university administrators send a Word document my way, asking me to sign something or approve it before it gets printed. So I get second-order coercion effects. Is there anything in your libertarian philosophy that talks about such effects? Or is that concept too complex for such a sophomoric view of the universe?

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • You misunderstand me if you think I was attacking you. I am attacking your idea. The simple-minded suggestion that merely not using MS products is the solution to MS's continuing abuse and hegemony over their customers. For many people, this is simply not an option, because of second-order coercion effects!


              The presence of conversion programs is all well and good. They are all there, in spite of MS's attempts not to document their formats. Who was the first to publish their Word document formats? I was developing programs, and I made an extensive check back in 1991+. Third parties who reverse-engineered their document format supplied doucmentation, not MS. (MS Developer net was not on the internet then.)
              Even now, the conversion is not perfect. Not becuase it cannot be done, but becuase the MS document format was not designed to specifications, but specifications written to suit the code, which is hidden.


              There is every evidence of poor design in MS's products. Yet they persue an agenda to dominate the software market not by excellence, but by monopolist action.


              You see, you've turned the argument into a personal one. These things are solutions for me, but should they not be solutions for others too? Can one not turn that the second order coercion towards weaning consumers from inferior products? Or should merely apologizing for MS's monopolist actions be the order of the day?

    • This was adressed in the article. BeOS was free, at least for a while, to be dual-booted with Windows. It would be technically trivial to enable dual-boot.

      So you'd think vendors, who are straining for differentiation, would jump on the opportunity. This falls into the "can't hurt, could help" category.

      *That* is why this looks suspiciously like the result of Microsoft tactics.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Casio (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ridge2001 ( 306010 )
    The author makes an interesting allegation, but does he have any proof of it? The license he talks about is still supposedly a "trade secret".

    The main evidence he presents is the absence of hardware vendors selling dual-boot systems. But there seems to be at least one counterexample [newsfactor.com].

  • DOS used to be a bootloader, for an operating system called Windows 3.1 (and, less obviously, some later versions too).

    If we're going to call for restrictions on operating system bundling practices, we must be prepared to draw a line in the sand and define at what point a bootloader itself is *not* an operating system, and at what point it is...

    Think about it. Is an OS something that allows a user to select from a number of different programs, each with their own storage/comm mechanisms, and have those programs run, successfully, managing resources as needed, to completion?

    On the one hand - sure, lets melt down our bootloaders to make weapons, but then again: what're we really doing?

    :)
    • uh... not to pick nits, but DOS is an OS. Windows 3.x (and, arguably, 9.x) is a GUI.

      And the issue isn't bootloaders. It's dual-boot capability. Half the ./ crowd could probably write a competent bootloader. Be's problem was that they couldn't get space on OEM machines' hard drives.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Who says no one wanted it? Looking at the feature set, I am confident that had I seen BeOS then, I would have picked it up, along with Linux.


          It was too bad for BeOS, and for me, that we were not on each other's radar. And why not? Becuase BeOS had a huge barrier to surmount, to get into the market. That all the industry players were into talks with them indicates interest. But they all dropped the ball, indicating that other factors were at work. To all our detriment.


          Just think: by 1997, we could all have a multimedia capable OS with a journalling filesystem. But we could not because of the shortsightedness of the OEMs and the greed of Microsoft.

      • True, DOS is an OS. I'm not saying it's not an OS - but that it served as a bootloader for Win3.1, another 'operating system'.

        You're missing my point, which is:

        What is an operating system, what is a bootloader, technically? At which point does a bootloader, legally, become an 'operating system'...

        This distinction may not be so clear to you right now, but there was a time when there was little distinction - and fighting on this front may not prove to be worth it, against Microsoft.
    • Your statement makes no sense. On x86 systems, a boot loader is something that resides on the first sector of a disk partition. The purpose of the bootloader is to load an OS image and jump to it. DOS isn't a boot loader. That's like saying Linux is a bootloader for X. DOS *has* a boot loader, which is a separate entity entirely. GRUB blurs the lines slightly (because it has many OS-type features such as a shell), but it's still a program that is contained in the first sector, and its sole purpose is still to load an OS image and jump to its starting location. Interestingly, it could be stated that GRUB is actually an OS, but its bootloader still retains a seperate identity.

  • Dual Booting??? What for? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )
    Dual booting is just not a serious solution for most people. If you really need that app that only runs on Linux or BeOS or whatever, you don't have time to reboot your machine to get at it. You buy a second machine, you buy a software VM, or you find a substitute that runs under Windows.

    The last solution is the one most people choose. The substitute may not work as well as the non-Windows alternative, but unless you're a total fanatic, it's just not worth the hassle.

    • If you really need that app that only runs on Linux or BeOS or whatever, you don't have time to reboot your machine to get at it.

      I think your statement contradicts itself. If you need that app, you'll do what it takes. Each OS has it's own unique repertoire of applications. Using the right app for the job will save a lot more time than it takes to reboot. It might even make the impossible possible. Not everyone can afford dedicated hardware for each OS.

  • I'm afriad I'm a victim of popularity here. I'm a Windows and Mandrake guy. I've heard of BeOS, but have not taken much time (actually none) to learn more about it. It appears from the article that BeOS had something to offer to consumers that made Compaq, Dell, and Hitachi wanted to sell it alongside Windows (until the lawyers noticed the fine print on the MS license).

    Given that, what is significant about BeOS? What is the hype about? etc etc.... ????
    • I once sat down and thought about what I was missing in Linux. BeOS had almost all of it.

      BeOS has great font support, and excellent Unicode support. It's very fast, with the main browser (NetPositive) being much faster than Netscape. It had a nice GUI and a 64-bit journaling filesystem years before Linux did. BeOS advocates always went on about how you can play 200 videos at once smoothly. It also has fairly decent POSIX support and includes BASH as the default shell.

      It was a very nice system, handicapped by a lack of applications, lack of hardware support and the other stuff that comes with being 4th in the OS market.
  • This article attacks David Boies in a footnote, saying that because he doesn't have an email address, he is "technologically illiterate".

    I heard that Boies is learning-disabled and does not read -- instead he has aides read relevant documents to him. He has an eidetic memory and doesn't forget what's dictated to him. (Interestingly, for that reason, he asks his coworkers never to tell him anything that they're not absolutely sure of.) So the comment I referenced is rather insensitive.

  • Write Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Monday August 27, 2001 @07:43PM (#2223648)
    According to my research, the web site for her office is http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/ [uscourts.gov]. The address listed there is:

    Clerk's Office
    United States District Court for the District of Columbia
    333 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
    Washington, D.C. 20001

    I'm going to verify the address tomorrow, but in the meantime, I suggest that everyone write her a letter informing her of this issue. Tell her that any remedy she proposes for Microsoft must address the bootloader issue. Be sure to tell her, in simple terms, what this issue really is. Include the URL to the Byte article so that she can read more about it.

  • Misunderstanding economics (Score:4, Insightful)

    by isomeme ( 177414 ) <cdberry@gmail.com> on Monday August 27, 2001 @07:53PM (#2223683) Journal
    From the article:

    The only OS projects that stand a chance are open source, because they don't play by the rules of the economy.

    This is akin to saying "The only things that get off the ground are airplanes, because they don't play by the rules of gravity". Every human activity obeys the rules of economics; at its core, economics is the study of how human labor and available resources are allocated. If some people allocate their labor to produce 'free' (insert your favorite sense of that term here) software, that is an economic activity just like any other.


    A narrow view of economics which ignores volunteer labor, bartering of labor and resources, and value measures other than money will steadily diverge from the real world as this new century progresses. The net has finally allowed us to approximate the world of "perfect information" which allows the economy -- in all its many forms -- to operate at peak efficiency. To think that it will continue to do so within current market models is to profoundly miss the point.

    • True time is money which ever way you see it, unless you are a student with nothing else to do ;-)

      The one big difference is that if a company goes boom none of the software source is available for people to hack at and let live - it just disappears into the trash-heap of time. In the open source community, while you will have factions that get bored and go onto other things, you will always have someone willing to spend the time improving it, and the code will always be legally available somewhere to be improved upon.

    • Every human activity obeys the rules of economics; at its core, economics is the study of how human labor and available resources are allocated.

      Yes, that is what economics claims as it's terrority. But that does not mean therefore that economics as it is currenly understood, explains market forces. Which economist predicted the tech stock bubble? (The bubble, not the bubble bursting. That even the man in the street knows).


      It was claimed by astrologists all over the world before that the movements of planets are absolutely important to predestigation. It turned out to be wrong.


      This is not to denigrate economists, it's much better than astrology. But the point remains - a reality check to the student of economics, to take the claims with a grain of salt. Not every piece of human behaviour is `rational' in economic terms. Is space exploration economic? If yes, why don't we do more of it? If not, why do it at all?

  • Installing multiple OS's would be trivial. The difficulty is that they would all have to be tested and supported by the vendors. That takes time and money. The cost of putting BeOS on a machine would be much higher than the cost of an OEM license.

    Linux is much more popular than BeOS, yet Dell backed away from it on the desktop because it couldn't justify the expenses. The OEM's don't want it because it would hurt their bottom lines.

  • Responses miss the point largely! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aralin ( 107264 ) on Monday August 27, 2001 @08:20PM (#2223778)
    I read the article and its really excelent, go and read it NOW! What disappoints me is that most of the responses moded up are missing the point entirely!

    Its not about if anybody wants it, its about the possibility, the option!

    Now, lets give an example. One of things about communist countries was, that you could not travel to the western countries. Not that anybody would want to do it and after the iron curtain fell, nobody actually does since they have no money to do it, but thats not the point. Now people are FREE to do it. They have the OPTION and the RIGHT. Its about your freedoms. Microsoft restricts freedoms of the OEMs to use the competetive solutions! and thats why its bad. Its not about how many people would actually buy. You will never know when you never try. And you never try, because Microsoft said so!

    You don't give up your freedoms and your rights only because you just don't happen to have the need to exercise them!

    • Microsoft restricts freedoms of the OEMs to use the competetive solutions!

      No they don't. They only offer their products at a cheaper price if you don't use a competitive solution. There was nothing whatsoever stopping any OEM from shipping dual boot Win/Be machines except those contracts that the OEM's signed with full foreknowledge of the consequences.

      "Mr. Auto Manufacturer, I will sell you these radial tires for $5 a piece if you agree not to use any other tires but mine."
  • While I find article presents a compelling example of MS' all too common anticompetitive behavior, it does not really provide a credible explanation for BeOS' failure. BeOS may well be a superior OS, in and of itself, but that is not sufficient to attract customers. For instance, the lack of software and support can easily outweigh any benefit that any individual consumer could draw from increased stability and performance.

    In addition, I find it hard to believe that installing BeOS as a dual boot system is any greater an obstacle than the numerous other disincentives that present themselves -- especially when it is possible to design software for make the conversion riduculously simple. Dual booting means that you sacrifice useful HD space to both the partition and the OS files. You must learn how to use it. You must purchase much of the software, if it even exists, for BeOS, that you either already own or comes bundled with Windows (hardly an argument for MS), at least if you wish to use it in that capacity. You may have to contend with compatibility issues. The Cost of BeOS itself. And the lists goes on. Any one of these could be sufficient reasons NOT to use BeOS, or any other OS, without that particular form of monopolistic behavior.

    Although, MS has no reasonable excuse for its behavior, the writing was on the wall people. All Be's escapade has done is to demonstrate to some, those that believe BeOS to be a clearly superior OS, that a technically superior OS can fail. I do not understand how anyone familiar with the industry could not understand this. Certainly MS' monopoly position played a significant role in Be's demise, but moreso in other ways (e.g., the Applications && OS symbiotic relationsip--although much harder to quantify). Furthermore, even without MS' monopoly position, it is not necessarily impossible for a superior product (which is what Be is presumed to be) to fail.

  • Be and intellectual property. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WasterDave ( 20047 ) <davep@noSPAm.zedkep.com> on Monday August 27, 2001 @09:06PM (#2223923)
    There is something that runs a danger of being lost in all the noise here, indeed it probably will: Palm only purchased Be's IP assets, specifically leaving Be Inc intact and explicitly with the "rights to assert and bring certain claims and causes of action, including under antitrust laws" [yahoo.com].

    So, we could see Mr Gasee in court after all. Maybe a good time to buy Be stock :)

    Dave

  • The bootloader is not the issue. The issue is having more than one OS on the machine. And the partitions.

    First of all, who needs more than one OS? The answer is that some people do, and those reasons are generally for people who have the skills (or are learning) to install two or more systems on the same machine, and understand (or are learning) the issues they have to decide, like partitions.

    The majority of the computer using population does not need two operating systems on one machine. They just need applications that run. If we can offer them all the applications they need which run on Linux or BSD, then we can certainly suggest they run Linux or BSD instead of Windows. Then they don't need Windows. And if we make that suggestion before they buy Windows, we've saved them that money. And they can get a PC without Windows.

    Aside from the obvious market lock-in, there is another reason Microsoft would not want to have Windows co-exist with another OS. That reason is support. Who supports the software on a system when each can impact the other, not only during the installation, but also during regular operation? Support costs do go up, and the finger pointing ends up making everyone mad and no one happy. The only time dual OS systems work out is if you take responsibility for it yourself.

    Sure, I'd love it if more people knew they had a choice. But I'd never recommend to ordinary people to have a dual-OS system. It seems to be hard enough for lots of geeks to set up a multi-partition Linux system (preferring instead to have one swap partition and everything else on one big filesystem partition). And we would expect non-geeks to understand how to manage disk space between two co-resident operating systems? I think not. If someone not ready to do partitions wants to try Linux on a Windows machine, they should be using UMSDOS and LOADLIN.

  • My friend once told me...

    "Dual booting is like having a mistress, it's all great till they find out about one another."

    My experience (in dual booting, not mistress having) tends to agree with this.

    troy
  • Nothing prevents an OEM to ship computers with MS-Windows and some other OS. Now, if you want a few k OEM licenses (for wich you'd pay much less than if you bought them from a retailer) then terms are obviously different. This is business commom practice: you give someone some kind of favoured treatment and you demand some loyalty in return. Whats the point of an OEM license from an OS company viewpoint? Increase installed base, so as to make shifts to other OSs more expensive.

    MS could really make things hard for double booters. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this perception that a boot loader can fire up just any OS is wrong. The code in a partition boto record has to be boot loader-friendly, even if by accident. Think about this: MBR code doesn't need be interactive or offer options. One can write MBR code that leaves the processor in some funny state and write the OS partition boot code so as to count on that state or information, all 100% transparent to the user. If the user repartitions and installs a second OS and his generic boot loader of choice, this new loader has no way to know how to "deliver" the machine to this OS. Maybe one could write an "intelligent" generic boot loader that would mimick such behaviour upon detecton of the user choice, but then one would have to consider things like patents, reverse engineering, etc. Also, I'm not sure if it's possible to squeeze that much code in a MBR.

    I was told once, by a Marketing professor, that the tobacco industry considers one to be a non-smoker only 10 years after the person quits. In the meantime they call them inactive smokers. Be it true or not, I think this is why it's interesting for MS to have people *at least* double booting, as long as one partiton is Windows, for you never know...

  • Why not a bootable CD? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dwonis ( 52652 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2001 @12:24AM (#2224329)
    Why doesn't an OEM make a bootable CD that resizes the FAT filesystem (which would be defragmented before shipping), install an OS image, and rewrite the boot sector? Since that would probably be 3rd party software (i.e. contract someone to develop it), and the *user* would be the one modifying the boot sequence, Microsoft would have to create a clause that states that you can't sell other operating systems at all, which is much too stupid for even Microsoft.

    <rant>
    OTOH, I don't know why the [GNU/]Linux distro vendors don't do this themselves. Parted [gnu.org] seems to be ready - what are they waiting for?
    </rant>

    <rant more="more">
    I wonder if Debian would quit stalling my application (for almost 7 months now!) if I re-wrote the entire bloody installation system. If only I had the time...</rant>

  • Beginning of the article (Score:3, Troll)

    by Syberghost ( 10557 ) <syberghost@@@syberghost...com> on Tuesday August 28, 2001 @06:16AM (#2224733)
    The last 80% or so of the article has been done to death here, so I'd like to comment on the first part:

    Gee, BeOS users are stuck out in the cold, since their product is being discontinued?

    Can we revisit the claims you BeOS folks were making about it not being important that the Source be Open?

    This is why it's important, folks; no company can discontinue Linux. If RedHat dropped off the face of the Earth, my systems would continue to evolve and support new hardware.

    In two years it'll be hard for BeOS people to buy a new machine that functions properly under their OS, because the source is closed and one company can dictate whether or not it's updated.

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