Re: [seul-edu] Legal questions [was Re: They changed the site! ( was Re: [OS:N:] Donated PCs)

[Ed Lawson <elawson@lawson-philpot.com>]

On Sat, 4 May 2002 11:47:06 +0900
Robert Hawkins <rbh@okihawk.org> wrote:


> If, in fact, I CAN donate my daughter's PC without the OS,

Indeed you can donate a PC without an OS.


> And if I can donate my daughter's PC, what are the legal ramifications of
> MS in specifically providing mis-information(per your comments of context,

I believe you need to consider the morals of the marketplace and review the punch-counterpunch white papers between Novell and MS to get a feel for what goes on.  Unless the statements can be shown to violate some law regarding unfair and deceptive trade practice, the legal ramificationns are few and far between.  A very recent case in Calif. regarding Nike may change that to some extent if followed elsewhere.

I did a Google search on donating computer and schools and found many hits for  schools and organizations which accurately described the situation and did not suggest the PCs had to have the origial OS.  One had simply repeated the MS language, but even then it was rather evident it was talking about PCs with a MS OS installed, not a requirement the OS stays on the machine.

I could go on a rant about educators and "technology" and perhaps I will later, but it is very disturbing that people who should know better and who are hired to provide computer solutions for schools do not understand basic licensing law in this area and worse they would blindly and unthinkingly parrot something from a vendor's website when presenting info to the public.

MS donates a great deal of software to schools, has made it easy for schools to obtain MS software through aggressive deals, and most schools are so  indoctrinated in the "faster, newer, and MS way" that they will not accept machines unless they can run at least Win98 well anyway.  So it it rather hard to understand the language in question except as a poorly executed message that Intel boxes with Windows on them must have the original license in some fashion to comply with the OEM license.  It is difficult  to believe that anyone familiar with software licenses would interpret it to mean a PC owner is compelled to maintain only the OS that came with the machine on it for all time.


Ed Lawson