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The Free Software Foundation Europe(FSFE) (no connections to the Free Software Foundation(FSF), despite the name) has logged a win in Italy in court for the freedom to choose the operating system on new computers. Luca Bonissi won after two years of court battles. He won the first round in a kind of small claims court, but Lenovo responded by lawyering up and attacking. The court eventually rejected all of Lenovos argument, confirming that the right to reimbursment for pre-installed software is due. Further, an additional 20k EUR in damages were awarded to Bonissi.
In a historic judgment in Italy, in a case initiated by FSFE supporter Luca Bonissi, Lenovo was ordered to pay 20,000 euros in damages for abusive behaviour in denying to refund the price of a pre-installed Windows licence. In a motivating gesture for the Free Software cause, Luca donated 15,000 euros to the FSFE.
[...] It should go without saying that everyone should be able to freely choose the operating system to run on their personal computers. Free Software is about granting the liberty for people to freely run software they desire and, consequently, decline the software not respecting their freedom. But Microsoft and the vast majority of hardware manufacturers dishonour this principle by dictating which operating system their customers must use, forcing them to run Windows even when they simply do not want to.
See also the FSFE Windows Refund Guide and the Racketware Guide about how to avoid the Windows Tax.
Previously:
(2014) Windows Tax now Illegal in Italy
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday March 02 2021, @08:29PM (12 children)
Yeah, I'm aware of most of that history but it doesn't answer my question. Aside from that, the answer to the "microsoft tax" was to simply not pay it, write your own operating system, and vertically integrate the hardware and software. There was a little ol' "fruit company" that did that, and I think it worked out well for them.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 02 2021, @08:50PM
Apple was already building PCs before the IBM PC came along. Microsoft was in business at the point in time (1977) when the holy trinity (Apple II, TRS-80, Commodore PET) came along. Microsoft was a nice friendly company that didn't seem evil. They even sold a version of Adventure that was ported to PCs. (prior to IBM PC)
Apple was already developing Lisa (predecessor to Mac) at the time IBM PC was in development (and thus MS-DOS was in development).
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 02 2021, @08:52PM (7 children)
You've got your timing a bit off. Apple was competing against Altair, the S100 computers, etc. MSDos was later. IBM didn't come out with the first IBMPC until Apple was already at (past?) the Apple ][+.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 02 2021, @08:56PM (2 children)
Altair was 1975. And other homebrew computers in this time. Apple II was 1977 and announced in BYTE magazine. IBM PC was 1981.
MS-DOS (rather PC-DOS) was simultaneous with IBM PC in 1981.
I think I have the time line right, and there are years of BYTE Magazine to corroborate. Also in 1977 was the same year of the TRS-80 and Commodore PET. The PET was prior to the Vic or C64.
Does all that jive with how you remember it?
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday March 03 2021, @01:36AM (1 child)
Yes. That sounds right. So when Apple was building their system, it wasn't competing with MS/PC-DOS. (Actually, IIRC, the IBMPC came out around the time of the Apple III. A really inferior thing to compete against.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 03 2021, @06:07PM
At the time, we were developing using the UCSD p-System. (on Apple systems rebranded Apple Pascal)
At one point, our product ran on four different machines, which was amazing at the time:
1. Apple II
2. Apple ///
3. IBM PC
4. Corvus Concept (raise your hand if you've ever used that one)
The non-Apple systems used the UCSD p-System version IV, but Apple had forked Apple Pascal from UCSD p-System version II. So we didn't have binary compatibility, but did have source code compatibility. We had to compile two different versions of our binary. A version II for items 1 & 2 above, and a version IV for items 3 an 4 above. This is because the p-Code object code had changed format and improved opcodes between version II and IV.
I used an Apple /// for a couple of years. We generally liked it much better than the IBM PC. It wasn't the hardware, but the OS that we liked. The SOS operating system on Apple /// was way better than the standard p-System on IBM PC. So we did source code development on Apple ///, and then did the compile step on IBM PC to service items 3 and 4 on the above list.
We had a Corvus Constellation network and hard drives. This allowed all our workstations of various kinds to share the same disk space on the server. (at this time server meant a "disk block" server NOT a "file" server as today)
Those were fun days.
On IBM PC it became harder to sell installing the p-System as the OS. Even if we set it up with dual partitions and the ability to dual boot.
Along came this product from a Canadian company Datalex called the Datalex Bubble. It encapsulated the entire p-System within an MS-DOS executable. Now our program looked like an MS-DOS program that could be installed on a standard PC. The underlying "weird" p-System OS was hidden (mostly) from view.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 02 2021, @08:57PM
Oh, I see who you replied to.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday March 02 2021, @09:09PM (2 children)
Apple at its inception was competing against those companies. That's just one point in time.
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday March 03 2021, @04:29PM (1 child)
There was some overlap, but Apple DOS was at the end of its life while MS-DOS was in its infancy.
Apple DOS first came out in 1978, with the final version 3.3 released in 1980
Microsoft PC-DOS first came out in Aug. 1981, and MS-DOS 3.31 came out in 1987
Meanwhile, Apple had pivoted away from Apple-DOS to release Macintosh System Software v1.0 in 1984 (eventually renamed Mac OS)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Mac_OS [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_DOS_operating_systems [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by istartedi on Wednesday March 03 2021, @10:50PM
Sigh... inception is one point in time, and the DOSs are one class of OS. The context for this discussion is not just a DOS tax, but also a WINDOWS tax, so I thought it was plainly implied that we were talking about the companies and their OSs in general, not just the DOS era.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 02 2021, @08:52PM (2 children)
So many people bought in to the MS-DOS and PC-compatible world who didn't take Apple seriously. Periodically it would be heard in the industry by people who probably just hated Apple for some reason, that Apple would go bankrupt. Yeah, Apple was the company that was going to go bankrupt every single year since 1981.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Thursday March 04 2021, @01:11AM (1 child)
In 1997, Apple was seriously staring down bankruptcy. The filing was imminent until Bill Gates saved Apple with a $150M contribution to Apple that he probably hoped was going to ward off the DoJ.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 04 2021, @04:16PM
That is very true.
Apple management didn't believe their own Power PC story. They continued to not make enough new Power PC models and make too many 68K models -- the ones nobody wanted to buy new any more. They suddenly had $1 Billion in inventory nobody wanted to buy.
Totally stupid move. Totally the fault of management.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.