Slashdot Mirror
Unbundling Windows Declared Legal in Germany
brokeninside writes "Infoworld has an article about Germany's highest court on civil matters declaring that Microsoft can not prevent dealers from unbundling OEM software. This ruling stems from a lower court ruling in 1997 on a lawsuit against a German company for selling an OEM copy of Dos/WfWG sans hardware."
I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but I don't think it's so wrong that you're not allowed to resell OEM Windows. I do think it's evil that they force their OEMs to bundle windows though.
Many products are like this. Retailers aren't allowed to split up their family-size packages of.. say, shampoo(ie 2 bottles shrink wrapped together, and sold as a unit), and sell them individually, why should this be different for software?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
I really should do that.. Blue spandex leotard, a cape, a glue gun, and fifty or so NT5 developers discs. Carrying a 2x4, I'd be the Blue Screen Of Death.
Or perhaps go out to the Army/Navy surplus store and pick up a dress uniform and the appropriate insignia. I still have my ID badge from a trip out to Selfridge; I'll just do a little digital magic to make it read "General Protection Fault, Microsoft Corporation".
I think I'll pull the latter on Halloween. I look far better in uniform than in spandex.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Has anybody given any thought to the impact this ruling might have on the legality on the GPL, at least as interpreted in Germany? The court ruled: "The right of authorship can only be exercised once. Once the product has entered the marketplace, with the author's agreement, he can no longer engage rights of authorship". Isn't that what the GPL is, though? An attempt to compel specific behaviours based on rights of authorship? The legal fuzziness of the GPL as already seen in a slashdot conversation earlier, might only get worse. Linux fragmentation as a result? Who knows.
I find it interesting to note how a seemingly small article lacking a lot of specifics needed to truly understand this is found to be very newsworthy specifically about MS. I found the article generally uninformative about Microsoft...
However, after having read the article, (unless I misunderstand the article) I think this has more to do with every software vendor selling items in Germany. The whole spiel about how once an item enters the marketplace, the author loses some rights to control the terms of secondary sales. This seems like a very big deal considering how big secondary sales are. This ruling could have a serious effect on sales of software in Germany. Its a ruling that may cause serious reform. If I am a big software company, do I want to sell it to a secondary sales company and lose my rights to protect the terms under which that item is resold? This would definitely worry me as a secondary sales company, while the big companies might begin to shy away from contracts for this sort of product sales. This ruling seems like it would be big for any type of vendor in Germany...and it definitely will be interesting where it will lead to.