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Dell Says Re-Imaging HDs a Burden If Word Banned
N!NJA writes "In an amicus curiae brief filed on Aug. 24, Dell asked the judge overseeing the Eastern District Court of Texas to reconsider its order blocking sales of Word, part of the original ruling in favor of Canadian software developer i4i. In the worst case, the brief argued, the injunction should be delayed by 120 days. 'The District Court's injunction of Microsoft Word will have an impact far beyond Microsoft,' Dell and HP wrote. 'Microsoft Word is ubiquitous among word processing software and is included on [redacted] computers sold by Dell.' 'If Microsoft is required to ship a revised version of Word in Dell's computers, a change would need to be made to Dell's images,' Dell wrote. 'Making such a change would require extensive time- and resource- consuming testing.' An addendum to the brief notes that it was authored in Microsoft Word, part of Office 2003."
That's par for the course when you become an OEM. Deal with it.
If they hadn't preloaded all of their images with free trials and bloatware then this wouldn't be a problem in the first place. When I have to setup one of their machines, the first thing I always do is reformat and build a new image anyway without all of the extra crap that shouldn't be there.
Here I sit, all broken hearted.
Came to poop, but only farted.
I actually worked at a computer manufacturer. Regardless of whether you think computer manufacturers should test their software or whether they are doing a crappy testing their product, it takes a ton of resources to get a master image out. You are testing multiple masters, not just one, based on different SKUs, etc. I admit, some of the testing we did were stupid but when you are consider MM units shipped and if a stupid error goes through you might pretty much bankrupt the company, you want to make sure you get enough testing.
As for OpenOffice, are you willing to ship out 1M+ units without good testing? Assembling your own computer is very different from shipping out 1M units all over the world + liability for computer tech support (regardless on whether you think Dell support sucks, it probably costs them $10~$20 per call; when you figure out a typical profit margin of 8% per unit, couple tech support calls will kill your margins).
If they have paid Microsoft for the right to Sell x Million copies of Office, then Microsoft has already sold x Million copies to Dell.
Does the injunction apply to resllers?
Sorry, your argument doesn't hold water.
Let's look at the same argument used by Corporate America - specifically, RIAA. The statement that file sharers are "criminals" is common. It is a determined effort to alienate filesharers from people who genuinely respect the law. That inaccurate statement is incorporated into any and every PR release made by a majority of IP holders. "Criminal" are costing Corporate America billions of dollars annualy.
I've argued and pointed out many times that file sharers may or may not be guilty of infringing on CIVIL LAW, but that does not make them "criminals".
Honesty demands that we not use the same dirty trick against Corporate America. Microsoft is not a "convicted criminal". They may be a bunch of rat bastards, but being a rat bastard is not in and of itself a criminal offense.
Please, don't put me in the position of defending Microsoft again.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Third parties will be harmed while the patent holder isn't likely to see anyone buying their product instead of Word.
Which is not the point.
As much as I dislike software patents, if there's ever been a clear case regarding them, this is it. MS partnered with i4i, took their technology and included it in their software without an agreement.
The penalty for being caught with the hand in the cookie jar can not simply be that you now have to pay for the cookies. If it were, then trying theft first would be the rational choice. A penalty like "no more cookies for you, not even if you pay, plus penalties and paying for those you took so far" sounds about right.
MS is a company with tons of spare cash, literally. Hitting them with a monetary penalty will make them laugh, and continue on their merry ways. Telling them to actually get their damn dirty fingers out of the cookie jar is what hurts them.
Yes, and their partners who sold the cookies on to others. Poor fellows. I almost feel sorry for you. It's not as if anyone would ever think that MS might be a company that's anything but spotlessly clean and nothing like this could ever happen, and contingency plans would be entirely unnecessary.
New Rule: If you put all your eggs in one basket, you don't have a right to cry if it falls.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org