On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 5:04 PM, Nishit Dave stargazer.dave@gmail.com wrote:
On 11 Sep 2014 12:56, "Pirate Praveen" praveen@onenetbeyond.org wrote:
We have now sent a legal notice to HP on this via Prasanth Sugathan of Software Freedom Law Center and it is covered by Economic times
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/software/ishan-masdekar-sends-legal...
Bravo for this initiative, all who are part of it!
I see some issues with getting a refund and starting a flood:
- OEMs get an OEM license from Microsoft for installing Windows on to
consumer PCs - the terms may be negotiated, and pricing may be very low for a leading OEM like HP (though not negligible) - would the OEM or Microsoft be willing to make their pricing public?
One would have to take whatever they declare as price.
- Both the OEM and Microsoft can say that the OS is an essential part of
the system, as the proprietary drivers of some components will not run on any other OS, and alternative drivers may have unintended effects or illegal uses (such as SDR manipulation)
Irrelevant. The user has an alternative
- They could also claim that it would be virtually impossible to verify
whether each request for refund has come after Microsoft software had been removed completely (and we can't allow them to implement a kill switch)
Irrelevant again. They have to prove otherwise
- They could claim that they would be unable to market and sell their
products without a warranty for performance and quality if they are unable to control which OS is loaded on to the PC, and that blank devices can only be niche, probably obsolete products
In which case they should be selling the 2 separately.
- Microsoft tax is also the name for the underhand practice where it
extracts a heavy price for licenses from OEMs that sell more than a certain percentage of Linux PCs, and no OEM would want to acknowledge this publicly
Cross subsidy is a legal offence as per the MRTP act.
- OEMs rely on quick obsolescence, which is accentuated with Microsoft
bloatware, to keep on getting your money every few years - Linux makes this cycle much longer, plus after sales service harder - so no positive incentive for them
Irrelevant.