Posted by Gordon Sande on 05/08/06 21:14

On 2006-05-08 13:53:29 -0300, Donald McDaniel <orthocross@invalid.net> said:

>> So, yes there are suppliers of "OEM" Windows who sell to retail customers.


> Sorry, bud, but OEM Windows may NOT be sold to "retail customers". The
> license is always sold to "system builders", and may ONLY be sold to
> "system builders". Now, you may prefer to call them "retail
> customers", but Windows users refer to those who purchase such licenses
> as "system builders".

There is a difference between Microsoft lawyers after a three page preamble of
jargonistic definitions and users.

Having bought such a license for Win/XP rather than upgrading from Win/NT
there was no representation that I was a system builder in any sense
beyond Microsoft's self imposed fiction.

You know about the duck test - walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and
looks like a duck then it must be a duck.

>> Not just white box clone assemblers but walkin cash customers, or internet
>> credit card customers as the case may be. You just have to toss the cable,
>> or whatever that makes it OEM, and live with the "clean only" installs for
>> the savings. One presumes that Microsoft was a bit untidy with their license
>> wording, or that the preferred wording would too restictive so they life
>> with it.
>
> Microsoft chose the wording in all its EULAs very carefully, after
> consulting with their Legal Department, as the majority of all
> developers do.

So carefully that a $0.17 piece of cabling gets around it! The hardware
component
is clearly so critical that they don't even bother speciying it so it
is probably
just something that would otherwise be tossed. Or maybe TigerOnline has such an
old OEM contract that it does not have the new improved words. Or maybe
they just
choose not to look too hard.

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