Microsoft Laptop Recipient Auctioning Laptop

Salvance writes "While most bloggers who received the controversial Vista powered Acer from Microsoft are keeping them, Laughing Squid has decided to auction off his free laptop from Microsoft and donate all proceeds to the The Electronic Frontier Foundation. (EFF) He saw this as a great opportunity to support a worthy cause, and some other bloggers are following suit. What's funny is that Microsoft is now backpedaling and telling bloggers to send back the laptops. Do they even have a legal right to do so?"

Comments

huh

[Swimport]

For the price of these laptops they could have sent out complimentary Vista discs to thousands of these so called influential people.

Re:huh

[dominique_cimafranca]

Given Vista's steep hardware requirements, I doubt if just sending out CDs would have done much good.

Re:huh

[mrchaotica]

If Microsoft wasn't so bent on keeping everything proprietary, there really would only be the cost of the media. Look, for instance, at organizations like Debian -- you don't see them paying for "key management," now do you?

Re:huh

[node 3]

That's like saying if it weren't for car thieves necessitating keys and alarm systems, then the price of cars would only be the cost of the materials that go into it.

It's possible to steal a car (and it happens quite often). It's impossible to steal Windows (and has never happened, ever).

Unless you simply mean stealing the physical disc, which the key doesn't really do much to prevent.

Copyright infringement != theft.

Re:huh

[kasperd]

That's like saying if it weren't for car thieves necessitating keys and alarm systems, then the price of cars would only be the cost of the materials that go into it.

If I was going to buy a car, it would be in my best interest to have a good lock on the car. If I was going to buy an operating system, it would not be in my best interest to have loads of artificial restrictions in the operating system.

Re:huh

[Aim Here]

Economics lesson.

The COST of cars is the price of the materials that go into it, plus the cost of the labour required to make and of the resources required to move it to where it is to be sold. There's also a single one-off fixed cost to begin with that relates to the factory the car is built in, plus the cost of designing the car, plus some other small sundries. Those one-off costs become less and less important, the more cars you sell.

The price is the cost plus the profit.

Now with a copy of some piece of software, the price of the materials, the labour required to make it, and the resources required to move it is either the cost of the box and the media it comes on (i.e. very cheap) or the price of letting the internet distribute it (i.e. more or less free). There's still a one-off fixed cost, which is the cost of writing it in the first place, but that becomes less and less important as time goes on, just like the cars. Besides, it's eminently possible to get those fixed costs taken care of for more or less nothing too. Linux does it. GNU does it. (Free|Open|Net)BSD does it. You get the picture. The reason that they're generally free (as in beer) and Windows isn't is precisely because they've relaxed the need to cover the fixed costs (and, of course, curbed Linus' immense lust for profit and power) by using copyright law to proprietarise software.

Price again, is cost + profit. In this case, with the proprietary locks on, the profit margin is immense, because the marginal cost of what Microsoft sells is next to nothing, and that is why Bill Gates is the richest man in the world.

Your particular analogy is broken because a) you confuse cost with price and b) ten cars costs roughly ten times as much to make (given the initial investment in making a car factory) as one car, whereas ten copies of windows costs roughly the same to make as one copy of windows (barring the fixed costs, again). The price of both cars and software is cost + profit; however with software, the cost is next to 0, and the profit only exists because of the existence of the proprietary 'locks'.

Hope this helps.

Re:huh

[arkanes]

Without a *prior* contract in place, anything anyone sends to you in the mail is yours, free and clear. This is due to an old mail fraud scam, where you'd send someone magazines, or books, or whatever, and then bill them for services rendered. Shrinkwrap licenses don't work (because courts and lawmakers actually gave a shit about that kind of deceptive marketing 100 years ago). So if Microsoft sent people a laptop, if they didn't have a contract *before they sent it*, then they just gave away laptops. That's why the Microsoft letter says "give away or return", and that's why it's just spin anyway. Corporations don't give stuff like this away "just for fun". You can bet that it's entered on a balance sheet as "goodwill" somewhere. But you aren't supposed to be so obvious or extravagant with your bribes, so they're taking heat and they're trying to spin out of it.

Re:Can they ask for them back? Yes.

[Timesprout]

Well given that Microsoft clearly said they could be sent back or given away when they gave them out initally of course they can. Also Microsoft have not asked for the latops back. They asked that they be given away or returned to them when reviewed, very big difference.

Re:This article needs to be changed.

[db32]

Unfortunately that tends to be "We are going to lose, but don't know it" speak. I wonder how many politicians have been elected on the platform of "We don't have to lie because we are better" great...and you also aren't elected so your policy of not lying really means about squat because the guy who is telling all the lies is the 'decider'. Not that I really advocate lying here, just playing devil's advocate a bit.

Re:This article needs to be changed.

[Orange Crush]

I thought that the open-source community was suposed to be better.. There are no fan-boy-fanatics, (RMS aside)

Every community has its fanatics. It just comes with the territory when dealing with people. Whether it's a religious, political, social or technological faction; there are foaming-at-the-mouth busybodies with agendas and megaphones and there are reasonable rational participants. In most cases, the fanatics are only a tiny minority. They're just a lot louder.