Amazon UK Refunds Windows License Fee, With Little Hassle

christian.einfeldt writes "Alan Lord, a FOSS computer consultant based in the UK, has announced that Amazon UK honored his request for a refund of the Microsoft license fee portion of the cost of a new Asus netbook PC that came with Microsoft Windows XP. Lord details the steps that he took to obtain a refund of 40.00 GBP for the cost of the EULA, complete with links to click to request a refund. Lord's refund comes 10 years after the initial flurry of activity surrounding EULA discounts, started by a blog post by Australian computer consultant Geoffrey Bennett which appeared on Slashdot on 18 January 1999. That Slashdot story led to mainstream press coverage, such as stories in CNN, the New York Times Online, and the San Francisco Chronicle, to name just a few. The issue quieted down for a few years, but has started to gain some momentum again in recent years, with judges in France, Italy, and Israel awarding refunds. But if Lord's experience is any indication, getting a refund through Amazon might be as easy as filling out a few forms, at least in the UK, without any need to go to court."

Comments

Re:Obvious

[Seth Kriticos]

Now where do you get that from? There are vendors that sell boxed and/or subscription based Linux distributions (most known are Red Hat and Novel (SuSE), but there are others too).

And there is a lot more money in support, money that actually is helpful for the local economy.

Also there are other commercial operating systems that are sold (e.g. QNX).

They just don't have the power and ruthlessness of OEM bribery and monopoly like Microsoft, but they are there.

Re:Obvious

[jedidiah]

> If you want to play any media on it that isn't opensource, it's not as simple as just trying to play the video and automatically finding the codec.

This is simpler under Linux than it is Windows, and far simpler than MacOS.

Ubuntu has staked the heart of this particular bit of FUD.