Bonum Certa Men Certa

Forced Windows Purchases: A Decade Later, Still No Improvement

The regulators are fast asleep. Apart from the fact that Microsoft makes profit from GNU/Linux preinstalls [1, 2, 3], it's still nearly impossible to find and then to get them.



Taiwan, China, Poland, [1, 2], and Hungary have formally complained about Microsoft this month, but not the United States. As pointed out yesterday (see the comment at the bottom), the American (US) regulators are indifferent because they are themselves corrupt. Meanwhile, says a reader, Steve Ballmer's trip to Portugal might be aimed at intercepting Free software.

It's not grim news all around though. Yesterday, for example, this article showed up and it proves that some people do get in trouble for buying Microsoft. Quebec's government comes under legal scrutiny, which is not exactly surprising given prior complaints about the procurement process there. It's equally bad in the UK and elsewhere.

Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives.

The lawsuit by Facil was lodged with the Quebec Superior Court on July 15 and made public on Wednesday. In it, the group says the provincial government has refused to entertain competing bids from all software providers, opting instead to supply public-sector departments with products bought from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle Corp.


As a side note, speaking of lawsuits, Novell still has a lawsuit against Microsoft and it could win hundreds of millions of dollars. This was mentioned before as a possible reason for Microsoft to buy Novell once it becomes a suitable target (with .NET, patents and all that).

Steve Ballmer rides SUSEMicrosoft may have given up on its old strategy. See the previous post about a patents revenue strategy and recall those SCO analogies . Microsoft suffers from a customer retention issue. Could Microsoft buy out the lawsuit and the competitor? It could be less expensive than buying out threats like XenSource (using Citrix as a proxy) due to competitive bids and a large numbers of players in this space. Naturally, GNU and Linux can spread endlessly between vendors, which keeps them secure from hostile takeovers, but software patents change this. Novell and Microsoft actively try to change this using "licensing". This exclusionary move shows just why Novell and Microsoft are already becoming the same company.

“This exclusionary move shows just why Novell and Microsoft are already becoming the same company.”Let us return to exclusion at the OEM level. Exclusionary OEM contracts is something that we covered before and this article from the Czech Republic was mentioned some days ago. It shows just how impossible Microsoft has made it to choose an operating system other than Windows (or no operating system at all, i.e. just bare-metal hardware bundles). Over at Groklaw, Pamela just wrote: "Isn't it ridiculous that it's nearly impossible to avoid buying Vista on a new computer, even if you have no desire to get Vista? And then Microsoft counts such "sales" as indicating an interest in Vista."

Going a long way back, you can still find this detailed page on the impossibility of obtaining a Toshiba computer without Microsoft software. Not much has change since then.

I hope that this web page will prove useful to those people who want to purchase a laptop without Microsoft Windows. The short summary is:

* It is near impossible to buy a laptop without Windows * The Microsoft Software License Agreement allows you to return the software if you do not agree to its terms. * It is difficult, but not impossible to get Toshiba (at least in Australia) to send you a cheque in return for the Windows License.


Here is another good page, which is no longer live, but it has a copy on the Internet Archive.

My name is David Chun. I am an undergraduate student at UCLA, where I am in the UCLA Center for American Public Policy and Politics. I am working this spring as an intern at the Consumer Project on Technology. On May 25, 1998 through June 3, 1998, I called 12 computer manufacturers, known in the industry as original equipment manufactures (OEMs), attempting to buy computers without a Microsoft Windows operating systems.


This is not competition. It's free market distortion.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Rust People: Drain the Swap, You're Holding It Wrong
Does Rust make sense?
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, linuxconfig.org, and Plagiarised Phoronix
Many articles out there are nowadays fake
European Patent Office Illegally Gutting and Outsourcing Its Functions, Acting Like an Above-the-Law Commercial Business (It Won't Stop at Formalities Officers (FOs) and Classification Slop at the EPO)
breaking/violating laws and conventions
Links 19/09/2025: Lobbyist of American GAFAM Becomes Data Protection Commissioner in Europe
Links for the day
 
Links 20/09/2025: Internet Shutdowns, Media Censorship, and Climate Worries
Links for the day
About 700 New Gemini Capsules in 13 Months (or 54 Per Month)
4.8K would represent a 20% increase
Techrights the Name Turns 15
About 6 weeks from now we turn 19
Microsoft is Running Out of Time and Floating Fake Figures, Fake Projects, Fake Narratives, Fake Excuses
Also, a lot of Microsoft's "revenue" claims are circular financing (i.e. Microsoft buying from itself, which means Ponzi-like fraud)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 19, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, September 19, 2025
Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Navigating the Pressures of Modern Life and SpellBinding Accidentally Wrote Another Gemini Server
Links for the day
Links 19/09/2025: Press Freedom Dying in US, Anti-Austerity Strikes in France, and Alan Rusbridger to Leave 'Prospect'
Links for the day
Offloading to the Sister Site
In the interest of not overwhelming readers
Links 19/09/2025: Coffee Club and "SpellBinding is Now Absurdly Fast"
Links for the day
Links 19/09/2025: Media Freedom Ceases to Exist in US, "Consider Dropping Twitter/X"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/09/2025: Thinking and Insect Bites
Links for the day
Microsoft E.E.E.: Git Will Now (or Very Soon) Fully Depend on Rust, Which is Controlled by Microsoft
Microsoft now makes Git dependent on Rust, or making Git dependent on GitHub, which is proprietary
The Right to Punch People (Apparently)
At Brett Wilson, Brett's job title is "Head of Crime" and Wilson normalises calls for violence
Slop or Fake Articles Have Turned Linux Journal From a Pioneering/Trailblazing "Linux" Magazine Into a Nuisance
some sites with former reputation - good reputation - turn into cesspools
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 18, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 18, 2025
Brett Wilson LLP Seem to Have Had Only One Litigation Client in 2025, He Was Previously Charged, Just Like the Serial Strangler From Microsoft (Whom They Now Represent)
Karma is superstition, regulators are not
Project 2030 to Cover How "Project 2025"-Styled Anti-Media Zealots From America Targeted Techrights and Tux Machines
The common denominator is also their attacks on women
Brett Wilson LLP Failed to Meet Deadlines Set by Judge 7 Months Earlier, Tried to Ruin Our Holiday, Then Had the Audacity to Ask Us for Over 3,000 Pounds for Its Own Lateness
As a matter of principle we will never respond to assassin while we are on holiday
On Claims That After Bluewashing Red Hat Will Increasingly Become an Indian Company
Discussed this week (long and detailed)
Americans Attacking British Sites Only Months After They Leave America
We find it kind of funny if not ironic that this site, originally an American site, got legal harassment only from Americans and only months after it had moved to the UK
Despite Losing Over a Quarter Million Dollars a Year Software in the Public Interest (SPI) Gives Helping Hand to Libreboot
SPI's financial state depends a lot on its public image or its reputation
Slopwatch: Google Helps Plagiarism and Sends Traffic to Ripoff Artists
That Google as a company helps spamfarms is noteworthy
If You Want to Know the Future, Listen to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Andy Farnell
We're sure the FSF will have plenty of its own output
Links 18/09/2025: A Taliban Ban on Internet Access and Troubled US Job Market
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/09/2025: Computer Literacy and Accessing Alhena's Database
Links for the day
Links 18/09/2025: US War on Media (Truth Banned, Cancel Culture by the Hard Right), NYT Chief Executive Warns Cheeto is Deploying ‘Anti-press Playbook'
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 17, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 17, 2025