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Dell Charging £16 Fee for Installing Firefox

posted by LaminatorX on Saturday March 08 2014, @11:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the Dude,-you're-getting-a-bill! dept.

lhsi writes:

"Mozilla are investigating reports that Dell is charging customers £16 to install the Firefox browser, according to The Register.

Mozilla's trademark policy says that you can't charge for distributing unaltered binaries of the software.

According to the BBC, Dell said that the money was being charged for the time and labour involved.

"In this particular situation, the customer would not be charged for the Mozilla Firefox software download, rather the fee would cover the time and labour involved for factory personnel to load a different image than is provided on the system's standard configuration."

A preliminary consultation with legal teams has stated at Mozilla, but is at an early stage."

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by jimshatt on Saturday March 08 2014, @11:36PM

    by jimshatt (978) on Saturday March 08 2014, @11:36PM (#13352) Journal
    I actually don't see why it would not be legal. If you have 'a guy' install it for you, you would pay too. Besides, the MPL grants you this right, so the trademark policy and the license seem to be at odds. If that is even legal, it's at least 'sneaky' to take away rights in a trademark policy that you granted previously with your license.
    Will a judge go for the intersection or the union of the granted rights (and vice-versa for the restrictions)?
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  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:46PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:46PM (#13614) Homepage Journal

    I laughed out loud at the summary. Joe Sixpack can install pr0n trojans but not FireFox?

    Maybe I should RTFA but that might spoil a good joke. Hell, TFA is in the Register, that site's one big joke anyway, always good for a laugh.

    --
    We not only don't have all the answers, we don't even have all of the questions.