This is not good for Linux, below the OS Security from Intel

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They're certainly guilty of monopoly.

There's actually no US laws against that. You're perfectly free to create a monopoly and to monopolize entire sectors.

It's when you *abuse* your position as a monopoly that it violates US laws. They got their wrist slapped once, so I'd be surprised if they were ever charged again by the same countries that already nailed 'em for the Internet Explorer fiasco. Well, not unless it's particularly egregious.

By the way, while not a legal scholar, this doesn't appear to be anything that'd violate monopoly laws. For example, you can't install a whole bunch of operating systems on the hardware Windows uses. They're, both Microsoft and silicon OEMs, not actually obligated to let you run anything on their hardware. See MacOS for example. They don't have to accommodate Linux.

At the same time... Linux runs far more devices on the existing hardware than Microsoft does. OEMs aren't dumb. They're not going to eliminate that giant chunk of the market that is the server market and they're certainly not going to do so for a fading element of that ecosystem (the desktop computer). The x64 instruction set is universal across servers and desktops, as is much of the hardware. They're not going to shoot themselves in the foot.

Most of this thread is just FUD. The sky is not falling. Well, it probably isn't. It hasn't fallen any of the other zillion times folks have run around like panicky herd beasts with half the info and wild assumptions about the rest.
 


This seems to say otherwise:

The Sherman Antitrust Act
An unlawful monopoly exists when one firm controls the market for a product or service, and it has obtained that market power, not because its product or service is superior to others, but by suppressing competition with anticompetitive conduct.

It's here on the Federal Trade Commision's website:


 
No, that says what I said. You even quoted it yourself.

",,, but by suppressing competition with anticompetitive conduct."

Monopolies are fine to exist, so long as they don't abuse that position. Chances are that you have several where you live, from the water company to the people who provide your electricity. Those are local monopolies, but fine examples.
 
You have inspired me to look into this on a deeper level.
Thank you.
 
You have inspired me to look into this on a deeper level.
Thank you.

Not a problem. For example, the post office USPS is a monopoly that's enforced (no one else can be a letter carrier, just parcel carriers).

A monopoly isn't illegal by default. It's illegal if it's abusive - that is things like suppressing competition, price fixing (which can also be against the law if you're not a monopoly), etc...

In a geographic area, my business was (at one time) a monopoly in several fields. It was, in our case, that we'd invented the tech. So, we got their first. If we then worked with companies doing something like *specifically* offering a better deal than if they went with us exclusively instead of a company that had developed the same tech done differently, that would have been abusing the monopoly.

We were a regional monopoly in certain fields. So, even with that we had to err on the side of caution. We couldn't offer our suppliers special rates if they refused to do business with another company - for example.

From your very own link:

"Obtaining a monopoly by superior products, innovation, or business acumen is legal; however, the same result achieved by exclusionary or predatory acts may raise antitrust concerns."

Emphasis mine...

All sorts of people are confused about this, but it's pretty straightforward. But, it gets tossed around and mixed in with other FUD-spreading and people seldom take the time to verify what they 'know' to be true.
 
The TPM has keys and those keys are encrypted. We shouldn't have to get permission from the operating system that has "windows as well as gates" in order to boot our Linux operating systems.

Windows 11 Must Be Stopped - A Veteran PC Repair Shop Owner's Dire Warning​



U.S. V. Microsoft: Court's Findings Of Fact​


United States v. Microsoft Corp.


Microsoft Antitrust Case​



It seems to me that we are in a tit for tat war with M$. Linux developers are working to keep Linux from drowning due to the constant incursions against Linux software and vendors hardware.

Just wondering here, what could or might happen if the good folks from Linux (all of us) picket or write to companies saying that we don't want these anti trust measures used on hardware or software items that they sell?

I encourage you to write to Dr. Richard Stallman and our King of Linux: Linus Torvalds.
As members of the Linux community we should not allow these anti competitive practices to be established to stop or hinder us from being able to use Linux on our own PC's.

Dr. Richard Stallman's e-mail:
[email protected]

Linus Torvalds e-mail:
[email protected]
This does help with the Microsoft Spying - https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
 
It's disturbing... Now that it's blatantly in the wilds. I say that because let's be realistic, hardware companies have been creeping for years, especially intel. We know it's possible to have an evil chip (like ME) running atop a CPU, we also know that if it stops users running whatever they like, it will be hacked, the a ROM will be dumped, reverse-engineered, hacked, and the the new ROM flashed successfully back onto the chip -- if not a less complex bypass. Users, especially those of our ideology, are notorious for being smarter than tech companies because our combined intellect and creative resourcefulness is far greater than that of all the tech giants even if they mutually cooperated. But that's not my point, actually...

My point is that it's a pointless move to try to monopolise things now when in the next 10-15 years, almost everything is going to be an integrated, disposable mobile device with planned obsolescence of about 4 years max. That's really how they'll get a monopoly; by simply making any user-built device redundant in favour of mobiles. Think Apple's M1 and intel's 12-gen aren't an experiment with ARM? Think again. Once lower-power processors are consuming less power to performance -- and they eventually will -- it's game over. OEMs can ship their products with preinstalled OSes that cannot be removed without flashing the device with a custom ROM, like we see with Android. And in 10-15 years time, I promise you it'll be very difficult. From a social perspective, people won't bother doing that. Who here has flashed their phone with a custom ROM? Be honest guys. Maybe when we don't have desktops to go to, we'll be more motivated, but I think defeatism will likely win and choosing a product will boil down to a lesser of evils. Think tech companies don't know this? Think they aren't thinking ahead? This Pluton thing is just part of the experimental phase as we make our way towards the next transition. As I said in another post: I'll be the crazy guy who bought a truckload of PC parts and peripherals who's completely disconnected.

Disclaimer: none of the following content suggests I have or will engage in the illegal obtaining or storing of any copyrighted materials, nor should any endorsement of this behaviour be inferred...
Between myself and my bestie, we'll have accrued about 32TB (that's our base aim, 16TB each) of entertainment media through totally legal means so we'll have more than our lifetimes permit. As for the "new stuff", I don't play very many modern games (could easily quit at PS2 level) and most new movies & series are heavily-politicised non-innovative, superficial shite. TBH, there are so many movies and series right now that are on my to-do list, plus the ones I'd want to re-watch (advantage of minor brain damage: easily forgetting what you've seen), so I'd have minimum, if any, reliance on streaming services. For books, physical copies will always exist. E-books have been the norm for well over a decade, but physical copies still live on. Music is the biggest problem, but again, there's tons to discover right now that dates back even to the 1950s. Plus a plethora of indies on Youtube -- of which, only what is legal to watch offline would be downloaded.
Once everything we've obtained through legal channels is archived, through fully legal methods, it adds up to our own personal cyber world (we may eventually invite others to join us). That will see us through to the end of our lifetimes, so I have my backup plan for the Infocalypse, when it happens (if it does so in my lifetime, especially given my life expectancy being lower than average).

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of day-to-day stuff that'll hurt me: from internet browsing to telecoms, to manual appliances. I'll have no choice with some aspects to my life. But having that little offline 32TB asylum is better than nothing.
I'll be willing to fight for "the cause" so much as my life allows, but I'm not going to wind up a crazy old man like RMS (no offence, he's a brilliant mind) who refuses to even open a non-free webpage or carry a phone. I don't have the luxury of his support network (granted they recently distanced themselves when he got metoo'ed, but he still has a powerful safety net). I have to accept what I can't change or give up on things like having kids, a meaningful career (I still plan to leave my mark), etc., because this requires being part of society. But, I will have my offline asylum and I think maybe a lot of people will and maybe, just maybe, enough of us will come together to add more social value to everything.
Anyway, what's happening technologically -- or at least going to have happened -- is just a by-product of progress. 100 years ago, we had a lot more freedom from monitoring. We also had a lot more incurable diseases, a lot less convenience, unsafe long-distance travel, and ironically a lot more happiness. It's just how things work. All you can do is prepare as best as possible, accept your losses, and do your best to fight off abuse of power, abolition of human rights, and general injustices -- without compromising your sanity and stability too much (or that of your family).

I really do make long posts sometimes. I'll try to make this the last one. Maybe I'll start a blog and link to it, lol.
 
There's actually no US laws against that. You're perfectly free to create a monopoly and to monopolize entire sectors.
Think you're confused:
A legal monopoly refers to a company that is operating as a monopoly under a government mandate. A legal monopoly offers a specific product or service at a regulated price. It can either be independently run and government regulated, or both government-run and government regulated. A legal monopoly is also known as a "statutory monopoly."
AFAIK, nor M$ neither Apple operate "under a government mandate". And of course, they're not natural monopolies either:
Natural monopolies are allowed when a single company can supply a product or service at a lower cost than any potential competitor, and at a volume that can service an entire market. Since natural monopolies use an industry's limited resources efficiently to offer the lowest unit price to consumers, it is advantageous in many situations to have a natural monopoly.
They're a private monopoly: owned by one person or a (small) group of people who seek private profit without returning anything to the community they extract that profit from. Is that illegal? Of course not: they owned the law.
 
Think you're confused:

Nope. Not at all. How about from the FCC themselves? I'm pretty sure they trump anything you'll dig up.


You're allowed to have a monopoly - provided one doesn't abuse their monopolistic position (both to get there and to maintain it).
 
You're allowed to have a monopoly - provided one doesn't abuse their monopolistic position (both to get there and to maintain it).
Again; they own the law.
Companies including Facebook, Google and Microsoft typically donate to PACs to support or oppose a candidate or issue. But after the Capitol attack, and subsequent votes by some members of Congress against certifying the 2020 presidential election results, many companies said they'd rethink who they support and how.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-indu...tical-contributions-in-wake-of-capitol-siege/
You're still thinking in your "monopoly", with no real power at all to influence people's decisions, like some other real monopolies can.
 
Loss of control of the intel platform began long ago with Intel power management running beneath the regular cores. Special high security computers are often unboxed in a clean (non-network connected) environment and patched before they are deployed by users, and there is a whole special class of IBM made PowerPC systems that have similar power management features, but a more open isa (OpenPower) which has actually documented means to disable power management features. I gather pureOS tries similarly patching intel power management on their hardware on their own, as Intel does not generally offer such cooperation or products at all.

Given that historical context, pluton seems to try doing "more useful" things more easily than what could potentially be done abusing the power management infrastructure or even TPM. However, "more useful" is not in terms of things more useful for end users...
 
Again; they own the law.

... Of course I know the donate large sums of money to political action committees, lobby/bribe officials, etc... What I don't know is how that has any bearing on what I said. My point was that monopolies aren't illegal by default which, for some reason, you decided to take issue with before posting your next bit about them owning the law.
 
My point was that monopolies aren't illegal
I know, and fwiw, you're right. My point is that since they own the law, then "legal" or "illegal" becomes a blur, and there's no way to tell anymore which is which; they're legal because the laws they make say so.
 
My point is that since they own the law, then "legal" or "illegal" becomes a blur, and there's no way to tell anymore which is which; they're legal because the laws they make say so.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The large tech companies are pretty much all terrible. Those that are monopolies are almost certainly abusing their position and, more importantly, likely committed tons of abuses to get to where they are.
 
Oh, don't get me wrong. The large tech companies are pretty much all terrible. Those that are monopolies are almost certainly abusing their position and, more importantly, likely committed tons of abuses to get to where they are.
Wasn't that my original point?

I like this thread. It's a respectful transaction of information and debate.
 
I sent Richard Stallman an e-mail about this topic and here's what he said:

To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
The issue you raise has worried me ever since I first heard of
"trusted" computing, about 20 years ago. I wrote the article
https://gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html, saying that it's
"trusted" for the music and movie companies and "treacherous" for us.
I don't have an idea for magically resisting. All I can think of
is to ask people to join in saying, "These systems are evil.
Let's find ways to defeat them, and organize to reject them!"
Would you like to help?
BTW, I do not consider myself part of a "Linux community".
I founded the free software movement in 1983/84 as a campaign
for freedom in computing. Linux is one important free program,
alongside others.


See https://gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html and
https://gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html, plus the history in
https://gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html.

--
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.o
 
Last edited:
I sent Richard Stallman an e-mail about this topic and here's what he said:

To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
The issue you raise has worried me ever since I first heard of
"trusted" computing, about 20 years ago. I wrote the article
https://gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html, saying that it's
"trusted" for the music and movie companies and "treacherous" for us.
I don't have an idea for magically resisting. All I can think of
is to ask people to join in saying, "These systems are evil.
Let's find ways to defeat them, and organize to reject them!"
Would you like to help?
BTW, I do not consider myself part of a "Linux community".
I founded the free software movement in 1983/84 as a campaign
for freedom in computing. Linux is one important free program,
alongside others.
Glad to see that.
You know if life was a little less crazy or I was the me from my early 20s, I'd be ready to gear up. But age is a cruel mistress. That said, you can count me in to contribute where possible... If there's anything more I can do than I do as a matter of course. I mean I don't use MS/Apple stuff, I run an almost entirely FOSS machine. I don't use any services that require me to install alien stuff to my machine unless I get to compile it (and can see the source was well vetted). I install Mint on any PC I fix for someone and every laptop user so far has loved it... But all within reason. I'm not about to throw my phone away, I can't avoid certain things like proprietary websites and closed APIs were I to need to write a remote tool. I also can't avoid the necessity of remote storage and Mega is the lesser of the two evils (and has better plans than Google). I also have my life, which is now a lot more complicated than a few months back. Still, as I said, I'd join in where I could. And I'll gladly continue sending angry emails to companies who only provide software for Windows/Mac and I'll happily stay away from social media, VR/AR, and all that new kiddy stuff.
 
BTW, I had to go back and edit my post and add the links that Dr. Stallman sent me in the e-mail.
I wasn't sure if I could post those links so I read the Rules first.
 
Wasn't that my original point?

More or less. My original comment was making you aware that monopolies aren't illegal in and of themselves and then my thought about this turn of events. People decided to not look this information up before insisting I was mistaken.

Frankly, I guess I can understand the confusion. The way it is portrayed in the media, people would think monopolies are illegal just for being monopolies.

Corporations exist because we the people allow them to. In theory, this comes with responsibilities. When certain types of responsibilities are not met, they've violated the public trust. So, you get 'antitrust' violations. Historically, you'd apply to be a corporation in front of the legislative body and included in your articles of incorporation was why your corporation would benefit the public.

Arguably, things are actually better today than they were then. Back then, many incorporated entities were pretty abusive until we got some real antitrust (Sherman Act - which the Supreme Court has since de-fanged a little) on the books. As memory serves, said act would have actually made monopolies illegal entirely?

But, I digress... I find this stuff fascinating.
 
I found out that:
But it’s legal to be a big company, and it’s also legal to be a monopoly. Here:

You were right: KGIII. I did the searching to find out and you were NOT mistaken--:)

I just have a problem with it when a company oversteps and breaks the trust.

BTW,I also found out in my seacrhing in the below link that M$ might just be in hot water with the EU.

Microsoft will likely have to contend with scrutiny from the European Union, which is already looking into an antitrust complaint against Microsoft from cloud software company Nextcloud. The EU’s competition laws are stricter than those in the US, so maybe the people Microsoft really has to appease are across the Atlantic Ocean.


****I sincerely hope that in our future one day we wake up and won't be able to boot in our Linux operating systems because of some TPM or some other type of hardware on a mobo. ****
 
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