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by greatgib 1953 days ago
Crazy to realize the long path we did, from being unable to buy any laptop at all without a Windows license to being able to buy computers directly shipped with Linux, and even open hardware.

I guess that for younger people, it might be hard to remember the "good old time" when we were fighting for reimbursement of the license.

One time, I did the process to try to get reimbursed for one laptop in France.

At that time, there was a lot of uncertainty and no clearly defined process, but it was clear that the French law was on our side.

In the doubt, I did it all: registered letters to HP and to the retailer. I think that in theory it was supposed to be HP that should reimbursed me, but I think that they never replied to me.

On the other side, I received a reimbursement from the retailer in a kind of "nice unofficial way":

<< We think that we are not responsible to do that, but here is a 100 francs reimbursement so that you will stop annoying us>>

(So it was not really needed that I burned/shred my Windows license or anything else)

1 comments

Well, at least now in the EU it's completely 1000% legal for you to take that licence and sell it on if you wish. There have been several court cases specifically about re-selling OEM software licences and all of them have been lost by Microsoft. As a customer in the EU you have a very explicit right ot sell licences for any and all software you own, even if it was bundled with a pre-built machine.