Microsoft-Lindows battle expands in Europe

[Julio Franco]

Microsoft has expanded its legal battle with Lindows to Europe, putting pressure on PC makers there and on the company to stop distributing Lindows software.

The dispute opens another front in Lindows' trademark spat with Microsoft, which has claimed that the company's name violates its Windows trademark in the United States. Microsoft's lawsuit over that issue is scheduled for trial next March.

Read more: CNet News.

 

[Krugger]

Pressuring PC Makers not to distribute/offer competitor's software... didn't Microsoft learn it's lesson? i guess not. Until they win this March lawsuit they have no right to pressure PC makers into doing anything. That's abuse of their power and is what got them into so much trouble thus far.

 

[Nic]

And all because *Lindows* sounds like *Windows* and might confuse consumers, or at least that is their excuse. Really, they are simply doing anything they can to kill Linux.

 

[StormBringer]

It surprises me that MS has not yet patented the concept of an OS(a few of you will get the humor in that)
They already have the majority, and while the popularity of Linux is growing, it doesn't look like Windows is going to be dying anytime soon. Though just to look at the tactics MS uses, an unknowing person(if there is anyone who doesn't know) might think that MS was on the brink of losing out to the competition.
As many have pointed out before, I don't think many people would confuse Lindows with Windows. I also don't think MS has to worry much about Lindows, IMO Lindows is not much of a threat. I've seen it in action on a few clients' systems, its not very impressive, I'd rather use Wine to run MS apps.

 

[Nic]

Microsoft's money machine revealed

The grand-daddy of them all was the unit responsible for Windows. It had costs of just $545 million but generated a profit of $2264 million, a staggering 415.4% profit on the money they put into it.

Let's put this in context. Dell's recent quarterly statement shows its margin at about 9%, which is a lower margin than even the least productive of Microsoft's profit-making groups. IBM's margin is similar to Dell's but HP's is about 6% in total, thanks mainly to printers, and Sun Microsystems is even lower.

Microsoft's near-monopoly in PC operating systems has basically given it a licence to print money.

 

[MoRulez]

The MS spokeman says that there are other competing OSs out there with different names and they have no issue with them, but they want Lindows put down for its variation or resemblance to MS Windows' name (it's patented apparently). Talk about bullying! They won't accept the slightest,tiniest, bit of competetion, even if it's a name-resemblance. This is unbelievable. Hopefully the European courts will be smart enough to throw out the cases.

Even after all's said and done, MS will remain dominant, if not a monopoly in the industry. All we can do is stop them from expanding to other industries and monitoring their subliminal threats to retailers and PC makers in every other continent.

The last thing we need is the entire globe relying on Windows like we rely on electricity, and this is beginning to materialize.