LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Glen Turner <glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au>
  To  : linux <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 20:37:54 +1030

Re: Buying a workstation

Jeremy Ervine wrote:

> I've been retailing PC's/Laptops for the past year ... and I have never come
> across any law stating "an operating system must be supplied with each new
> system sold". This law is fictitious, it sounds like the retailer was trying
> to get some extra $$$, or was greatly mis-informed.

I expect that the manufacturer has a licensing agreement with Microsoft that
requires that MS receive a license payment for every computer sold, regardless
of whether or not a MS product is installed.

These used to be common, I'm not sure if they have been clamped down 
on in Australia as they have been in the US (this was the subject of
the first MS-DoJ dispute).  Maybe you could check your agreement with MS
and let us know?

As Geoffrey exploited, the End User License Agreement allows the purchaser
to obtain a refund if they do not use the supplied MS OS -- this stops the
scheme from falling foul of consumer laws.  So under the license described
above, the refund money really comes out of the MS licensee's pocket.

As a result, many licensees are unhappy to sell you their product if
they expect you to exercise the EULA.


On the $40,000 fine, the MS license with the hardware supplier is a
contract with some clauses enforcable by the Copyright Act.  The maximum
penalties for breaching copyright are exceptionally high (for one, it's a
criminal offense rather than a civil offense).  MS, via the BSAA, has been
using this to put the fear of God into PC suppliers.

Your Win95 license is a license to run the software on one machine.
It is not transferrable from an old machine to a new machine.  If
you don't like this license condition, then use a competing OS.  I'm
told there's a rather good as well as cheap one called Linux, written
by a Finnish guy and his Internet mates :-)


One of the useful things we could do as a Linux user group
would be to snail mail local vendors and ask them if they
are willing to sell PCs without a pre-installed OS, or
with Linux preinstalled, or alternatively, if they are
happy with doing EULA refunds.  We could then put the
responses on our LinuxSA web site.


-- 
 Glen Turner                                 Network Engineer
 (08) 8303 3936      Australian Academic and Research Network
 glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au          http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
--
 Earth is a single point of failure