4 ms·
> OEMs are customers just like the people who actually buy PCs; you can't trivially restrict one without restricting the other. This is plain wrong. Microsoft
by Animus7 14y ago
> OEMs are customers just like the people who actually buy PCs; you can't trivially restrict one without restricting the other.
This is plain wrong. Microsoft dictates licensing with its customers and it certainly has the right to license on different terms to different customers.
And in fact they do exactly this with OEM's already.
MSFT is certainly within its rights and capabilities to include in their licensing dealings with OEM partners terms that prohibit pre-installing what they deem "crapware". And asking them to enforce this restriction (whether a good idea or not) is nonetheless reasonable.
- kevingadd 14y agoI can go out and buy the OEM edition of windows, as an individual, without signing any license agreement with Microsoft. And I can go install it on a PC and sell that PC to a customer of mine if I happen to operate a PC shop.
- Animus7 14y ago> without signing any license agreement with Microsoft Clickwrap is a blurry legal line, but you more or less are "signing" a license agreement by installing Windows. And nonetheless the "OEM edition" that you get is potentially very different (license-wise) from the custom-negotiated contract that Dell is bound to when they order two hundred thousand licenses from Microsoft.
- nextparadigms 14y agoI don't think that's right. Microsoft has partnerships with manufacturers, and they give them early access to new versions of Windows so they beta test, they sign patent deals, and so on. In the Microsoft-manufacturer relationship, Microsoft is definitely on higher ground and can dictate them some terms.
- dmethvin 14y agoThe 2004 DOJ-Microsoft consent decree explicitly prohibits Microsoft from tying Windows licenses to the OEM's ability to install other software. So Microsoft is not within its rights to do that.