Italy’s La Repubblica reported on Friday that the country’s Court of Cassation has ruled that anyone who buys a computer with pre-installed software and does not accept the terms of the licence when the computer is first booted up is entitled to a refund. The case involved was that of a Florentine consumer who’d bought a laptop with the Windows operating system pre-installed.
The judges criticised the practice of selling PCs with a pre-installed proprietary operating system as “a commercial policy of forced distribution”. The court described this practice as “monopolistic in tendency”. It also highlighted that the practice of bundling software (affectionately known as ‘crapware’. Ed.) with the operating system means that end users are forced into using additional non-free applications due to compatibility and interoperability issues, whether they wanted these programs or not.
The decision was welcomed by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). “This decision is both welcome and long overdue”, said Karsten Gerloff, President of the FSFE. “No vendor should be allowed to cram non-free software down the throats of users. This practice of forced distribution needs to end. We hope that the Italian authorities will turn this ruling into a real win for consumers and ensure that computer buyers can choose their device with any operating system they want, or none.”