Blogger declines HP’s EULA, rejects Vista, receives $200 check.

Posted by Dan on July 25, 2008

This is a very interesting story about the possibility of rejecting the terms of a EULA. Essentially, what happened is that the blogger bought a new HP desktop, but it came with Vista, and he refused to accept the EULA terms. He pestered Best Buy, Microsoft, and HP (Microsoft’s EULA does say to contact the manufacturer if the user does not agree with it), and after getting assurances from HP that they simply do not support Linux drivers, he was given a $200 check from HP CEO Mark Hurd.

Keep in mind that the PC was only $599 in the first place.  This action provides a market based precedent that consumers can receive a remedy from the manufacturer as a result of being forced into unfairly having to purchase an OS tethered to a product. Of course, there is no binding authority here, but it is a further acknowledgement that the tethering of OS software to a product is an inherently unfair practice, and harms a certain segment of the population.

Of course, the opposite is true, probably in larger numbers: the majority of PC users do not know how to install an OS, certainly not Linux, and would be harmed even more by ALL PC’s being required to come without an OS.

But it does present a solution. Legislation should be passed noting that this is inherently an unfair act, and regulating the PC sales industry to require that they remove or refund the price of the Operating System, on demand, if the customer does not wish to have it installed. That particular product ID for the software by the OS manufacturer will then be disallowed, preventing the user from getting their refund and then installing the software anyway. You need it to be on the request of the consumer, not requiring the salesperson to offer it, because a) they’ll forget, or ignore it to get more commissions, and b) cause more trouble than it is worth because people will look to save a buck or two, and then have what they think is a bricked computer, and c) the people most likely to be affected by this legislation and take advantage of it, are “hardcore” enough to find out about it online anyway.

It should be noted that the online PC sales industry already lets you remove OS software from a new unit you buy, and allows you to choose your type. Only the brick and mortar PC sales industry still requires that consumers get stuck with a certain OS, and the price tag, just for buying the desktop (obviously this excludes the research and server industries, which have much more focus placed on the OS’s capabilities. Notably this also excludes Apple, though this is changing with now two companies offering Mac clones- one with OS X installed, and one that is “OS X compatible, and you have to install it yourself”. However, we exclude Macs here because they inherently allow multiple operating systems as part of their marketing strategy via BootCamp and Parallels Desktop/VMWare Fusion. Furthermore, people only buy an Apple computer if they specifically want Mac OS. It is a voluntary choice to have the software tethered in this case. Thus, the tethering aspect is not such a big deal, as users know what they are getting into.)

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