By Rachel Chalmers
With the proposed Windows Refund Day on February 15 enjoying a tidal wave of press attention and support (CI No 3,580), Microsoft Corp has dismissed the movement as a tempest in a teapot. After hearing of Australian Linux user Geoffrey Bennett’s successful bid to get a refund for the Windows operating system pre-installed on his Toshiba laptop, users of non-Microsoft operating systems around the world have mobilized in a bid to coordinate refund efforts of their own. On January 20 thenoodle.com started collecting subscribers to a Windows Refund email newsletter. It signed up nearly 2000 people in 24 hours. Yet Adam Sohn of Microsoft corporate PR told ComputerWire that he believes there is no consumer demand for computer hardware without a Microsoft operating system pre-installed. At this point, manufacturers don’t see the market demand for this, he said, ultimately OEMs are businesses. Right now, the fact that most major OEMs are not shipping laptops without Windows suggests that they do not see sufficient demand for the product. In effect, Sohn says, hardware manufacturers are forced to ship laptops with Windows operating systems pre-installed by the exigencies of the market. He says is it not Microsoft that is forcing them to do so. Sohn maintains that Microsoft’s contracts with its OEMs do not prevent them from selling raw hardware, or hardware with a rival operating system like Linux, NetWare or OS/2. There’s nothing in any of our OEM contracts, nothing at all, that prohibits any of our OEMs from shipping a computer with any operating system other than Windows, he claimed. However since the contents of those contracts are a notoriously well-kept secret – Normally we don’t really comment on the specifics of our contracts with OEM, Sohn himself admits – his is a hard claim to verify. Sohn also questioned the motivation behind the leaders of the refund movement. The license language is very specific, he said, if the user will not abide by terms of the license then the OEM and Microsoft don’t want to license the software to that user. Bennett refused to abide by the terms of the license. You want to ask yourself why he did that. That license is to prevent piracy. Since what Bennett really wanted was a laptop with no pre-installed software at all, the implication that he intended to pirate Microsoft’s intellectual property can probably be safely laughed off. Sohn, however, draws another, more serious implication from the terms of the license. Users seeking a refund are told to approach the PC manufacturer who sold them the hardware, not Microsoft itself, as the Windows Refund Day organizers plan to do. The Linuxmafia site explains that decision by saying: The EULA [End User License Agreement] effectively has the OEM acting as agent for Microsoft. We feel it’s in Microsoft’s, the OEM’s and the users’ interest to have this refund handled efficiently, directly through Microsoft, and are estimating they will agree.
Not Microsoft’s problem?
Not Sohn, who says refunds are the OEM’s problem, not Microsoft’s. The license specifically suggests that these people should go and work through the OEM. The fact they’re going to show up in a Microsoft office suggests that they’re really a bunch of Unix people mainly interested in PR, he said. If users do take their claims to the PC manufacturers, how does Sohn expect the PC manufacturers to react? I can see a whole gamut of responses from assigning a dollar value to Windows to saying well, if you’re not prepared to accept the license, just give us the whole PC back, he said. As for the OEM at the eye of the storm, Toshiba has issued a formal statement in which it makes an obvious effort to toe the party line. The company says that the reason it currently sells all notebook and desktop computers with a Microsoft operating system is in response to customer demand. We provide computing solutions and do not provide refunds on any one component of a PC, including the operating system, the company said, we have been unable to confirm the accuracy of Geoffrey D. Bennett’s claim about the refund he received from Toshiba Australia, and we can not comment on their policies. Both Microsoft and Toshiba would dearly like the matter to end there, but with observers of the antitrust trial acutely interested in the outcome, and momentum building behind the refund movement itself, it’s safe to say that it won’t.
