No O/S as a right more than ever

[Ian Petersen]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 8:36 PM, I. Khider <contact-uc+NVM1kvX9BDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I thought this was the Linux users group! Surely my views are not
> counterintuitive here.

You're missing the fact that this is a simple matter of supply and
demand.  HP is offering you a machine with Windows pre-installed.  You
can choose to take the offer and buy one or you can choose not to.  No
one is cramming anything down your throat.  I agree that it's
frustrating to have to pay for a license you're never going to use.
I'd like to be able to buy a "naked" PC from any manufacturer I choose
but no one has done anything wrong but not making such PCs available
to me.  In my non-lawyer opinion, you don't have a case to present at
small claims court precisely because no one has done anything wrong.

The advice you were given was to vote with your wallet and let HP know
about it by writing a letter.  You can also work towards effecting
change by spreading the word that HP won't sell you a Windows-free
machine.  But HP is a corporation operating in a largely free
market--their prime directive is profit-making and they're going to
optimize towards making money.  Non-Windows users are apparently not a
big-enough market for them to worry about.  The only way you're going
to get anywhere with them is to convince someone important that
non-Windows users _are_ a big-enough market to worry about.  That
might be impossible because they get to decide how big is big enough
and it might be that the current market is too small.

The people on this list probably all agree that it would be ideal to
be able to buy an arbitrary machine with either Linux or no OS
pre-installed.  The fact that you're being told not to go to small
claims court and to quit whining is due to something else
entirely--the realization that HP doesn't owe anything to anybody.  If
the world changes and Linux users become the dominant laptop-buying
consumer, HP will either adapt and start selling laptops with Linux or
HP will get out of the laptop business.  In the time between now and
then, HP has to decide for itself whether it makes financial sense to
get into the business of selling laptops with Linux.  At this point,
it seems they don't think it's worth the money.  You can try changing
their collective mind but, AFAIK, you won't get very far suing them
for having the "wrong" opinion.

Ian
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