[FSF India] [Fwd: he who controls the bootloader]

[Raghavendra Bhat]

-------- Oorspronkelijk bericht --------
Onderwerp: he who controls the bootloader
Van: Mark-Jan Bastian <markjan@xs4all.nl>
Aan: discussion@hippiesfromhell.org

An interesting article about an issue that was not widely examined in the
Microsoft antitrust trial:

http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1115/byt20010824s0001/0827_hacker.html

It's about the way Microsoft licenses it's software to OEM's like
Dell and Gateway, that prevents non-microsoft OS's to be installed as a
dual-boot option on newly shipped PC's.

These secret MS-to-OEM licenses (not the EULA license!) have a provision
that  the pre-installed Microsoft-OS must be loaded by a Microsoft
bootloader only. And, the license agreement of the bootloader, states
that that bootloader may  only be used for booting Microsoft operating
systems. 

This prevents that any OEM can ship a dual-boot system with Windows and 
another OS. This is needed by alternative OS manufacturers (be it linux, 
FreeBSD or BeOS) to give any reasonable way to market a different  OS,
and allow it to gain marketshare.
Most joe-sixpack users of PC's don't know that there exists something 
besides windows. They will only use what is preinstalled, and are not 
going to do extra steps to buy, download and install alternative OS's.
This means that most people also won't have the chance to test
alternative operating systems. Installing afterwards will also give more
problems than a finetuned linux install that an OEM could deliver, where
everything would work first time you turn it on.

So, if a OEM like Dell or Gateway wants to give people an option to boot
into either Linux or Windows, that is not possible, Microsoft will
threaten them by either increasing licensing fees, withdrawing support,
or whatever argument they can make to convice them to stick to a
Microsoft OS only.

Be, Inc, a company that made the BeOS, found this out some time ago, 
when giving OEM's an option to include a preinstalled BeOS installation
for free, besides windows (dual boot). There was a lot of enthusiasm  at
the OEM's, but once the Microsoft lawyers visted the OEM, and 
explained their licensing terms again, they all had to refuse the  offer
of Be, Inc.

The interesting thing is that the U.S. antitrust trial was mainly about
the browser integration issue, while this bootloader control issue, is
much more clear case of anticompetitive behaviour.

Mark-Jan