On Jun 19, 2012, at 10:03 AM, Jay Sulzberger wrote:
In the United States and Europe there is a large body of statute
law, regulatory rulings, and court decisions which say that yes,
a large powerful company cannot take certain actions to impede
competitors.
Cite the law and case law that applies to these certain actions impeding Fedora (or other
Linux). Or please stop repeating this claim.
In particular entering into a compact to make
Fedora harder to install on every single x86 home computer sold
is not allowed. Or once was not allowed.
That's not how this works. It's harder to install relative to itself, but the same
barrier to installing Fedora applies to installing Windows. That OEMs then find a way
around that to pre-install is a function of the high demand for Windows pre-installed on
hardware by end users. And harder to install does not mean anything like impossible (or
effectively impossible) to install, an alternative.
Recently neither
regulatory bodies, nor courts, have enforced these old once
settled laws and regulations.
This large body of law will see that Red Hat had the option to have its keys included with
new UEFI hardware, making installations equally easy or difficult for all parties
involved, thus the anti-competition claim is rendered moot. That Red Hat declined to have
its keys included in on the basis of unfair advantage to other distributions is an
unexpected non-competitive behavior from the view of competition law.
Chris Murphy