Problems buying a PC without buying Windows

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

We continue to receive reports that OEMs face considerable problems in shipping
alternative Operating Systems.  In France, persons working to get Dell computers
without Windows for education institutions were told that Dell would have to pay
significant penalties to Microsoft if it advertised or marketed non-Microsoft
operating systems.   In the Halloween Memorandum, Vinod Valloppillil indicated
MS would modify the NT licensing fee if an OEM made a credible "threat" to offer
Linux pre-installed, and earlier (December 16, 1997) Joachim Kempin wrote Bill
Gates that "The danger does exist that more PCs might get shipped without an OS
and we should not take this lightly!"   This is John Bryan's post to am-info on
this issue.  Jamie 

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Subject: Exclusive OEM deals, still???
   Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 10:40:27 -0500
  From: John N Bryan <johnb@austin.rr.com>
    To: Multiple recipients of list AM-INFO <am-info@essential.org>


This was posted to Slashdot, http://www.slashdot.org, yesterday or
today, ( I didn't look at the date ).  I thought this was officially
proscribed already.  Is it going on less visibly, maybe not on paper???

"I work at a company which uses Linux all over the place and we buy nothing
but DELL machines. In the past we've asked them time and time again to
install some sort of Linux on the machines (They come with 98 or NT). After
getting their reps to come to our company and sit down with us and talk
about things, it turns out that Dell *HAS* to sell a Microsoft operating
system with every computer that they ship. It's part of a deal they made
with Microsoft. They said that if we ordered 50 machines within a year they
would do whatever it took to keep our business (which *WOULD* include
pre-installing Linux on the machines), but the rep added that they would
eat the cost of the NT license which they would buy from Microsoft for each
machine in order to keep their deal with Microsoft valid. This was
acceptable to us, but we still thought that the idea of Microsoft still
getting a license fee when we were buying a machine with absolutely no
Microsoft software on it was just absurd."

-JNB
-John Bryan
johnb@austin.rr.com
http://home.austin.rr.com/johnb/