[ale] A modest proposal for the times

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

lollipopman691,

> Or just buy a Framework ( https://frame.work ) laptop Naked and install
> what you want on there. I've been very happy with mine.
>

This is fine as far as it goes, but unless Framework increases their
manufacturing and distribution chain dramatically you will still have 90%
of the laptop and desktop users paying for an MS license needlessly.

I am not a pollyanna on this.   While I think a large number of people will
still buy Microsoft, having Linux show up in retail stores already
installed on the hardware might cause more people to be happy with it.

Years ago President Lula, of Brazil, started a program to buy lots of
inexpensive laptops at the end of their manufacturing cycle (where the
channels were trying to get them out of the way so new models could be
shown.  Lula specified "no operating system" since they were going to
install Linux.

Microsoft found out about it and told Lula that he was "encouraging
software piracy" since "75% of the people would pirate a copy of Windows
and put that on their system."   Microsoft wanted Lula to pay 34 USD to put
the "International" edition of Windows on the laptop.

This was a stupid solution because:

o Anyone getting that laptop would immediately put a pirated version of
full windows on it because the International version was so useless.  That
would force the piracy rate to 100%

o The piracy rate of desktop software was 84% in Brazil at that time.

o 25% of the people (by Microsoft's own admission) were perfectly happy
with Linux

o Therefore Linux reduced the piracy rate from 100% to 75%, beating the 84%

If you saw the same acceptance rate in the world market then the usage rate
of Linux would jump from 4% to 25% (or more).   At that point many more
applications would port, IMHO.

md
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20250407/16f82767/attachment.htm>