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[Editor's note: We generally try to provide balanced coverage of a story. This interview is "straight from the horse's mouth" and is, therefore, going to contain the biases of the interviewee. Nonetheless, we thought the story interesting enough that we wanted to put it out to the community to discuss. --martyb]
Roy Schestowitz over at Techrights has an informal, follow-up interview with e-waste recycler Eric Lundgren about his ordeal with Microsoft. Lundgren spent time incarcerated as a result of his efforts to re-use old Wintel computers and keep them out of the landfill. He is now finally out of prison.
"The judge didn't understand the difference between a "Restore CD" and a "License"," he complained, "and Microsoft convinced the judge that the "Restore CD" was of equal value and functionality to a new MSFT OS w. new license! I was honestly dumbfounded.. I kept waiting for someone to get it in court .. Instead – The judge threw out all of my expert witness' testimony and only kept Microsoft's testimony.."
[...] Lundgren was sort of tricked if not blackmailed. It was the old trick of plea 'bargain' that was leveraged against him. "They threatened me with 47 Years in Prison," he told us. "So my only choice was to plea-bargain.. I told them I would ONLY plead guilty to "Restore CD Without License" but then Microsoft convinced the judge to value a Restore CD at the SAME VALUE as a Full Microsoft OS w. License!"
Earlier on SN:
Microsoft's Full Response to the Lundgren Counterfeiting Conviction (2018)
California Man Loses Appeal in Copyright Infringement Case (2018)
'E-Waste' Recycling Innovator Faces Prison for Trying to Extend Life Span of PCs (2018)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 05 2019, @12:42PM (3 children)
Those refurbished computes should go to the less fortunate people.
Casting on them a "Debian/Ubuntu/Arch/Fedora/SUSE/FreeBSD/whatever" running systemd or an unreliable display driver is adding to their misfortune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05 2019, @01:10PM
Linux mint works fine these days.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Monday August 05 2019, @04:08PM
I've never had a problem with systemd on work servers or on my three Linux boxes at home. But I get your general point. That's why I added my disclaimers and didn't say, without qualifiers, "He should have used ____" where ____ is replaced by Debian or FreeBSD or similar.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05 2019, @05:25PM
you're an idiot. systemd and wayland work just fine.