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Lenovo Must Pay Damages for Pre-Installing Windows

posted by martyb on Tuesday March 02 2021, @05:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the windows-refund dept.

canopic jug writes:

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

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 02 2021, @08:50PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 02 2021, @08:50PM (#1119032) Journal

    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).

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