“Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who brought General Motors
to its knees over car safety failures (“Unsafe at any speed”), has
been talking and writing about Microsoft’s “poorly designed
products” that were “prone to crash” at the Bazaar, an open source
software event in New York. He drew attention to the narrowness of
the DoJ case, which ignored “a plethora of issues” relating to the
desktop monopoly, MS Office, and licensing issues. Nader has
previously arranged two conferences on Microsoft which focussed
public attention on the company. Nader is much admired by Microsoft
president Steve Ballmer’s mother, who was concerned that her son
was doing something that was criticised by her hero.”
“Nader’s first concern was pricing, where Microsoft had
increased OEM prices and charges more than three times the price of
BeOS. He also brought up the restrictions in Microsoft’s end user
licence agreements (EULAs) which often don’t allow Microsoft
products to be sold or transferred to another PC.”
“Those who prefer Linux often find they had to pay for Windows,
even if they did not require it. It is worth noting that Nader’s
organisation does practice what it preaches in that it uses Linux
in its offices. Jay Sulzberger of LXNY announced at the meeting
that there would be a Windows Refund Day organised in New York, and
since Microsoft had been unresponsive, they were going to court
about Microsoft’s failure to abide by the terms of its EULA, which
state that “If you do not agree to the terms of the EULA…” the PC
manufacturer (for OEM versions) or the dealer (for a retail
version), would provide “a refund.“