On Thursday 11 September 2014 05:04 PM, Nishit Dave 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!
A copy of the notice is available at https://mediacru.sh/download/FIF_461bKH5T.pdf
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?
Acer America has a refund policy and they mention the refund amount https://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/280/kw/windows%20refund
- 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)
Good point. That would be an incentive for us to push for free drivers (another battle we have to fight) and choose an A-platinum rated hardware listed at http://h-node.org/ (it lists only a single high end model that is released in 2014 and about 9 models that released in 2013, we have to certify more models there. Anyone interested in certifying laptops at this months' meetup at Directiplex? All we need a gnewsense or another FSF certified distro live cd, debian live at the moment doesn't have a recent testing image.)
- 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)
Acer America asks the user to submit the laptop at their service center. It will be removed by Acer personnel.
- 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
Not a good argument. They cannot get away that easily from providing hardware warranty because a different OS is chosen by the user.
- 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
Well, its their call anyway whether to make it public or not.
- 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
I don't think they would make that argument publicly.
And so on and so forth. Of course, you'll appreciate that I'm just playing the devil's advocate here to help us consider what would be the best strategy for getting a wider range of devices without a preloaded OS. The demand for this option is minuscule, as most Linux enthusiasts would not mind having a dual boot system, if it allowed them more choice in how they use the device. India, especially, sees people buy these OS-free PCs to install pirated copies of Windows on them, thus defeating the whole purpose for which many people have devoted huge amounts of energy and time.
Things are changing in many places with GNU/Linux taught in schools. People know they have a choice and cost of choosing freedom isn't very high.
Anyway, all the best with the case. I wish you success.
-nd