Comment 704 for bug 1

Greetings from .CZ

I believe the ultimate solution for this bug is hidden in this article (http://limulus.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/2010-the-year-of-the-linux-desktop).

The history teaches us that Windows didn't win "the desktop wars" because it was the best available choice at the time... on the contrary - it actually survived despite the fact it was at least one of the worst solutions just because Microsoft was "somehow" able to make hardware vendors bundle Windows instead of competing alternatives.

According to this fact, all we need to do in order to get rid of Microsoft once and for all is cutting their connections with hardware vendors because as I have already mentioned, they could never make it to where they are today if it wasn't for their support - as Mark noted in the very beginning of this debate, bundling Windows with the majority of new computers (most notably laptops) and therefore denying ICT users' the right to freely choose their OS is probably the the fundamental cause of all this mess.
Once the users have absolute freedom to buy their desired hardware without being tied to any particular system, we're probably gonna walk all over Microsoft in no time, even though less technically skilled people (and those too lazy to learn anything new) who got used to work with computers in certain way (which is making them literally addicted to current state of things and afraid of any change) will still choose to pay for Windows.

That's why i suggest we should do our best to make bundling illegal by some international treaty, so starting and/or supporting any ongoing effort to achieve this goal in your countries would perfectly serve this purpose (I got the idea because I heard something about European Union - which has recently been charging Microsoft pretty painful fines - discussing to ban selling new computers with pre-installed OS; it's actually funny how little effort was needed to Google the thread discussing this right on our own forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=558841).

Hope this helps our cause and thank you for all the blood, sweat and tears you're pouring into liberating the ICT world from shitware (by the way, the "blood, sweat and tears" cliche reminds me of this article: http://www.bbspot.com/News/2001/06/gates.html; check it out, I believe it's gonna cheer you up big time).