Microsoft+partner lock on distribution channels, you can't break it ...
Microsoft is just dragging their feet in allowing vendors to pre-load anything they want, which they should be able to do.
Should be able to do, yes. But unless it supports Microsoft and its partners, Microsoft will fight like hell to prevent such.
While Microsoft and Roxio may have come to an agreement, that was a commercial vendor v. commercial vendor. When you add in open source like the Mozilla Foundation, that is
very incompatible with the Microsoft+partner model.
In the Microsoft+partner model, the idea is to
lock everyone else out of the distribution channel. That includes not just the PC OEMs, but the retail stores that Microsoft has a significant stake in and controls their distribution channels, like Best Buy.
The only reason Apple found itself back in Best Buy was thanx to the success of the iPod. Right after Microsoft made their stake in Best Buy, took over their IT and had significant say in the distribution channel, any Mac product other than Microsoft's own Office for Mac was yanked off-the-shelf.
There is not a single open source project that is compatible with Microsoft, unless Microsoft itself can take it and freely use it in its own products with out restriction. The Mozilla Public License (MPL), much less the GNU Public License (GPL) found in most of the Linux-centric open source world, is one not ideally suited to such.
That's why Microsoft is behind so much marketing against anything GPL and, to a lesser extent, MPL. Unlike developments from Berkeley and related BSD, MIT and other open source licenses, GPL and MPL are not things Microsoft can just grab'n use. Understand that a great majority of Windows today is using many components from Apple (which was originally from non-PC developments), open source (still today, a lot of core libraries use code from upstream, BSD/MIT-licensed open source projects), and licensed or purchased companies (Internet Explorer was Spyglass Explorer, the #3 browser on the market at the time).
So you will
never see Microsoft bundling Firefox, unless it's ****** by government. In reality, government moves too slow anyway. And Microsoft is regularly able to use tactics to get around those orders, and the government is too slow to respond.
The way around the problem is around the distribution model. That's how open source continues to gain marketshare. It's how Microsoft is starting to lose enterprise accounts. And before Microsoft knows it -- between the grass roots in the homes and the enterprise deals outside of the retail channels -- they won't be "the standard" any more. It's not just foreign governments, but even the US government has completed "had it" with how Microsoft conducts itself, and is moving to -- as Ralph Nader said it -- telling Microsoft what it things as a consumer, instead of a regulator.
Even Office 2007 doesn't implement Microsoft own, ISO standardized (which is being repeatedly questioned by individual nations) Office Open XML (OOXML). They don't plan on supporting it for another 2 versions either. Hence why many organizations have just stuck with older versions of MS Office, like 2000 which is 3 version back (2007, 2003, XP, 2000), that OpenOffice.org actually does better than Office 2007 itself.
Same deal with Firefox. Microsoft likes to throw a lot of fear, uncertainty, doubt (FUD) around that Firefox isn't manageable in enterprises. But Firefox uses the same Gecko-Mozilla foundation as Netscape before it, right down to the full optional and mandatory policy framework. The same framework that can not only be managed with Active Directory Group Policy Objects (GPO) like Internet Explorer, but can also be managed by Netscape's own iPlanet Directory Server (now owned by Red Hat).
Breaking this FUD at the enterprise is what some of us do. Home consumers keep up the grass roots on the other side. The "distribution lock" that Microsoft has at the Tier-1 PC OEM and retail channel is impossible to break. The only way to implement choice is to go around it. Money is what keeps their distribution lock in place. But money cannot control things outside of that distribution lock.
(esp. non-US users
