First post, by ratfink
- Rank
- Oldbie
I have nothing against microsoft. They make too much money and they are too pervasive for my liking, but that's how the cookie crumbles. No software is perfect and theirs does a pretty good job, good enough for most of what I want to do.
But I think they take it too far when they start limiting the second user market for their software. Apparently, though I purchased copies of Windows 95 and NT4 on ebay a few years ago, I now risk getting suspended for a month if I try to sell them. This is because they are marked "for distribution with a new PC only" and MS have published a long-winded text on ebay about what this means. Or rather what it means now - not convinced they haven't shifted the goalposts here, so it may have no legal status anyway.
But even though I fail to see how this can be legally enforced [for one thing it means if you break a PC for spares, that DOESNT include the OS which apparently can't be used for anything else... hmm what would EC commissioners think I wonder], ebay seems to be enforcing it with a threat of a one-month ban [which in itself is legal as they can presumably do as they please]. As a straightforward case of a restrictive practice [imho], it seems to me it also runs counter to UK law.
Oh I am SO annoyed. I might have made all of ten quid on the NT, maybe even twenty with the Resource Kit.