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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."
I used to deploy OptiPlexes in an enterprise environment. SOP was:
- Remove from box.
- Start and assign computer name appropriate to asset tag.
- Install Altiris client.
- Install our image.
There were a few users who got OptiPlexes before I started working there, and were quite adamant about keeping the Dell base image. I will say this with confidence: if Dell does any testing of its base images, I sure didn't see it. I'm not really sure if their image qualifies as an operating system--it was more of a Dell advertisement.
While I can understand your point, the thought that crossed my mind is that Dell is arguing that companies should be allowed to willfully neglect patents just so long they're important enough? That doesn't sound very fair to me.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
"Stock" of course meaning copies of Word already under license, not shares of ownership. >_<
In fact, since the licenses are already sold, Dell can probably keep selling Word through the end of their current contract..
It does not seam to hard to meet the Judge's request/order...
To help you build your business in today's challenging economic environment, Microsoft is offering a mail-in rebate on select Microsoft Office products that you purchase pre-installed on your new PC.
None
Microsoft® Office 2007 Basic and Adobe Acrobat 9.0 STD [add $149]
Microsoft(TM) Office® Sm Business Ed 2007 -includes Publisher + Outlook 2007) Eligible for $50 Mail-in Rebate - MORE DETAILS [add $279]
Microsoft(TM) Office® Professional 2007 Eligible for $100 Mail-in Rebate - MORE DETAILS [add $349]
Just remove options 2-4. It seams that all of Dell's machines can be shipped with Office/Word.
This is an odd issue for the courts, as Microsoft did legitimately cheat I4I out (read the details), but on the flip side software patents are an unnecessary burden.
This "odd issue" is an excellent situation for just about everyone not involved in the case, though.
Firstly, arguably the biggest player in the software business is now on the wrong side of a software patents lawsuit, which is going to mean probably the most powerful legal team in the business is going to be looking for all sorts of arguments to get such patents overturned.
Secondly, there are going to be some hard questions about what constitutes "copying" in the case of software, which the big players have been carefully avoiding answering in court for a very long time, for fear that the already dubious legal basis for their EULAs and reseller-based sales models will be invalidated. Answering those questions definitively cannot help but clarify a lot of the ambiguity surrounding those issues. Does the act of installing a piece of software for which you have already paid constitute making a copy? Does the mere act of running software already installed constitute making a copy? It's going to be very unpleasant for players like Dell and HP if the injunction stands, even for a few weeks, and those things are found to constitute making a copy. But if they're not making a copy for the purposes of this software patent-related case, then logically they can't be affected by copyright either, and EULAs fall apart.
I wouldn't like to predict the outcome here, but I'm guessing some big players in our industry are going to be pretty upset one way or another. And given that consumers (and smaller players in the industry, for that matter) are almost always on the wrong side of status quo, hopefully that means we're all going to be pretty happy one way or another.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You might find the term inconvenient but it is essentially accurate.
While not precisely correct for technical reasons, "convicted monopolist" is entirely accurate.
They were found to have a monopoly and to have abused that monopoly on numerous occasions.
It's a useful shorthand to avoid overly technical jargon that would primarily serve as euphemism.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What I don't get is, last time I was on Dell's site, it let you configure a computer system. The exact same system offering Microsoft Office could be configured with WordPerfect and I think they had an option of no office suite at all. That means they have images with WordPerfect and images with no office suite. So, would it kill them to just use one of the images they already have instead of complaining that they have to make a new one?