The Register: Preinstalled Windows Illegal to Remove?

[ Thanks to
Wol for this link. ]

“If a PC shipped with Windows preinstalled, can you remove the
OS and install Linux instead? Well, no, according to Microsoft. A
somewhat obscure Microsoft site aimed at helping schools deal with
donated computers flatly states: ‘It is a legal requirement that
pre-installed operating systems remain with a machine for the life
of the machine.’

“If this is intended to mean what it says, then Microsoft is
effectively treating the hardware and the software as a single,
integrated package that you’re not allowed to break up. If the
statement is applied without qualification, then you’re in breach
of your licence agreement (and/or some bizarre law they’ve sneaked
past us) if you vape Windows and put something else on instead, or
if (as do many major companies) you buy a bunch of PCs with one MS
installed and then install another. Put this together with
Microsoft’s campaigns against Naked PCs,* which make it fairly
tricky to buy PCs without Windows on them because they ‘fuel
piracy,’ and we’re tottering on the brink of the age of compulsory
Windows.

“But ease up on the paranoia – this is a picture of the world as
Microsoft would like it to be, rather than the one that exists now
(we hope). Microsoft has certainly had some considerable success in
convincing schools that it is a legal requirement, to the extent
that some of them simply parrot the Microsoft web site (here, for
example, is Puyallup School District’s take), but it doesn’t seem
obvious that it’s even a Microsoft licensing requirement, far less
a legal one…”

Complete
Story