"My University offers me my Microsoft Windows license" Worldwide Campaign

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra rms at 1407.org
Sat Sep 26 21:30:24 UTC 2009


I also emailed AFUL. I run the portuguese "sister" campaign and am
a bit baffled.

On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 09:35:53PM +0200, Matthias-Christian Ott wrote:
> Dear Sir or Madam,
> 
> on your website you claim that you are the "French speaking Libre
> Software Users' Association" and therefore, support the usage and
> adoption of Free Software.
> 
> Today I received an identi.ca notice with a link to your "My University
> offers me my Microsoft Windows ® license" Worldwide Campaign [1]. On
> the campaign's website you encourage students to download Microsoft
> Windows through MSDNAA and to return the OEM versions of Microsoft
> Windows which the students own. You claim that this will send "send a
> strong signal to computer manufacturers" and also suggest to install
> GNU/Linux on the same computer.
> 
> Returning OEM versions of Microsoft Windows may convince hardware
> manufacturers to offer computers without Microsoft Windows, but
> encouraging students in the same breath to install a gratis copy of the
> same proprietary operating system won't support Free Software at all.
> 
> Following Richard Stallman tabaco analogy [2], this means that you
> ask students to return their tabaco to the shop in order to force
> the shop to not offering tabaco and on the other to get free tabaco
> samples from the tabaco company. This will of course not solve the
> problems of smoking.
> 
> I think the title of your organisation is dishonest, because you
> violate your own statutes. I suggest to either change your title
> and statutes or to stop your campaign and to apologise to your
> members.
> 
> If you really want to convince hardware manufacturers to offer
> computers without an operating system or with a pre-installed
> free operating system, I suggest to support the Windows Tax Refund
> initiative [3] of the Free Software Foundation Europe.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Matthias-Christian Ott
> 
> [1] http://www.racketware.info/msdnaa/call-on-students
> [2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html
> [3] https://wiki.fsfe.org/WindowsTaxRefund
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