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

[Matthias-Christian Ott]

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