Guy Kewney

It’s a safe bet that if you ask the average PC user to name a well-known computing resource starting with “lin” they’d think of Second Life’s unit of currency, Linden Dollars. And, five years back, the same people would probably have said: “Oh, Lindows!”

That was when Lindows was a brand name that didn’t belong to Microsoft. It does today, but only after a long lawsuit that didn’t in fact go Microsoft’s way: the software giant had to pay what is now Linspire Inc $24m to settle the case and get the rights to the name. And this was a case that Microsoft initiated.

I was reminded of this by an indignant Microsoftie, who was upset at last month’s decision by the European Community (EC) to add another ?899m to the fine Microsoft must pay for failing to comply with the EC’s original anti-trust ruling in 2004. “We’re not a monopoly!” said my friend indignantly. “We even had to pay when we tried to protect the Windows brand!”

There is, of course, a marked difference between protecting a brand, and exerting monopoly power. Monopoly power involves telling the small PC builder that they have to pay Microsoft for a Windows licence on every PC they build, whether or not they install Windows on every PC, because those are Microsoft’s terms of business ­ take it or leave it.

Stories of that sort of “negotiation” used to get some headline space, and then editors got tired of publishing them. But if you think Microsoft has stopped enforcing the policy, then you aren’t a small PC builder. As soon as you build enough machines to start asking for bulk discounts, you’ll get the “offer”.

This was exactly what Lindows was trying to change, five years ago. The story was of a deal called RevShare, a programme that pledged to let small and medium-sized computer dealers increase their profit margins by sharing in after-market revenue, even after their systems had been shipped.

Five years on, and Microsoft can afford to pay a billion dollars out of petty cash just for the privilege of ignoring EC fines; and I bet you didn’t even know you could still download Linspire for your Ubuntu Linux box for $50.

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