Is it fair of the EU to hammer Microsoft so much?

[Arrian]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

Who, me?

I'm a Canuck, remember?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you furriners are all alike.

You know what I meant.

-Arrian

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Asher
And the times homosexuals were jailed up until the 1960s...

Homosexuals are evil so that doesn't count.

[child of Thor]

I thought microsoft was evil?

I'm still not sure what i think about this. On the one hand i want to hate microsoft and promote an open world(see openoffice etc).
But then i'm glad at the uniformaty that windows has brought to my PC use, and that it mostly works and has free updates etc. Having a glut of paid professionals to keep things in order is more efficient than relying on donated time(as in many open source projects).

Whats to stop Microsoft from stopping its free updates of XP in europe for example? If this current situation is going to carry on in its nastiness?

So i'm still a fence sitter. what are the other alternatives to windows that are as easy and as fuctional/compliant to use? specificaly for playing games, as thats my no1 reason for owning a PC.

Linux? cool but no games platform.

So where would that leave other companies hoping to provide a windows compatible OS? I can see why they want the source - as you'd have to virtualy replicate it to keep the compatibility.

(I never, ever thought i'd stick up for MS!!)
Say it becomes open - and then MS closes its doors, as all the profits will be gone in the OS market.
So we get a bunch of people producing Windows clones(and they need to be atleast as good as the origonal). So thats cool - more competition, lower prices. Still how low will they be able to go before you cant afford to keep on all the update guys?
At the end of the day Jo public is scared of PC's. They want to be able to walk into a store and say "id like that pc please", take it home and turn it on and have everything work.
Having many choices of platform OS might be good for us geeks, but for the average punter this will just make the trial of getting a PC more of a mine field than it is?

Now if a standard can be kept(and monitered) within this new competive market, then maybe this will all work out fine. but its alot of hoops to jump through if all we end up with is another MS type body overseeing all the OS builds(and needing payment for their expertise)?