[ale] M$ refund

[Jim Popovitch]

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 18:56, Jeff Lightner <jlightner at water.com> wrote:
> My argument is that IMO it IS illegal under our anti-trust laws.  The
> two things are not the same.

I would be interested in hearing more about how you come to that
conclusion wrt the opening post on this thread.  Specifically, we know
nothing about M$ telling Dell they couldn't sell anything... what we
do know is that if Dell sold a vista capable system then they would
have to buy a license from M$ as part of their bulk discounted
licensing agreement.   It's also worth mentioning that Dell could have
declined that agreement and bought individual licenses from M$.   So,
do you really see it as an anti-trust violation when one company
offers a bulk discount but calculates licensing via another metric
than units shipped?   I can see where Dell would not want to pay for a
license that they didn't pass the cost on to the consumer, but that is
their choice not M$.

How would you negotiate proprietary desktop software licenses remotely
sold and installed?

-Jim P.