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."
(Score: 0) by crutchy on Sunday March 09 2014, @12:35AM
don't see what the big deal is. firefox might be available for download for free, but dell clearly thinks that the time they pay for someone to install it (or image it or whatever) is worth something.
linux is more about free as in freedom. i didn't have a problem paying a couple of hundred dollars for a boxed redhat linux 6.0, so companies have been making money out of linux for a long time, and that's good for these companies and good for linux.
(Score: 1) by broggyr on Sunday March 09 2014, @12:50AM
Apparently, some buyers also clearly think it's worth extra money to have it installed.
Taking things out of context since 1972.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Sunday March 09 2014, @03:13AM
I think it's a pretty petty argument actually. Dell deserves to make money, and what they are really saying is, "We don't really have the time for custom installs AND be assured of quality assurance on them. Do it yourself".
That's more or less correct. Consumers might not like the fact Dell is effectively not willing to sell the product by setting the price so high, but then that's the true cost of IT isn't?
We are all so abused and underpaid right?
Well, sucks to be them, but if they are so helpless that they can't install web browser on their own, they better budget a few thousand dollars a year for the help of professionals, or you know, actually learn to do something themselves.
This would be like a home buyer complaining that it cost an extra few thousand dollars to get whole house RO installed because that was vastly superior to the default city water hookup.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.