Re: [SLUG] Microsoft Screws Charities

[Peter Rundle <peter.rundle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>   The terms of Microsoft's Original Equipment Maker (OEM) licence state
>   that Windows cannot be transferred with a PC, making it useless.

Jokes aside this is actually something that most consumers don't understand.
You don't buy software you buy a license to use it, that you cannot sell.
Thus the software vendors have neatly wiped out the second hand market.

Many people sell their PC's second hand along with the installed OS, and that
is actually illegal, but MS don't bother to prosecute because it's only an
individual.

Personally I think that it is time that consumers and the gov't turned on
software vendors and took some of the aces off them. They have it too good,
a product they don't warrant, that has minimal reproduction costs, that you
can't buy second hand and that it is illegal to look under the hood and see
how it works so as to build a competing product. (I Bet Ford and Holden buy each
others products and pull them to pieces all the time).

No wonder software vendors are the richest companies in the world.

rgds

Pete