Dell Charging New Computer Users A Fee To Install Firfox

[fast eddie]

x

 

[Recycle]

Mozilla, the company behind the popular Firefox browser, is investigating reports that Dell is charging users with new computers to install Firefox. Reports from one user, who informed the Register website that he was asked to pay £16.25 ($27.25) to have the browser installed on his PC. Mozilla Firefox is free, open-sourced software, which can be installed by any user, in a matter of minutes.

Denelle Dixon-Thayer, vice-president of Mozilla’s general counsel, said there was “no agreement” with Dell, which would allow them to charge for installing Firefox. “Our trademark policy makes clear that this is not permitted and we are investigating this specific report.” That policy document clearly states: “If you are using the Mozilla Mark(s) for the unaltered binaries you are distributing, you may not charge for that product. “By not charging, we mean the Mozilla product must be without cost and its distribution (whether by download or other media) may not be subject to a fee, or tied to subscribing to or purchasing a service, or the collection of personal information.”

Dell Charging New Computer Users A Fee To Install Firefox

In response to this, Dell said that the money was being charged for the time and labour involved. “In this particular situation, the customer would not be charged for the Mozilla Firefox software download, rather the fee would cover the time and labour involved for factory personnel to load a different image than is provided on the system’s standard configuration.”

People took to Twitter to vent their frustrations regarding the issue: “Shame on @DellUK for selling @Firefox to customers.” Another user mentioned something interesting; “That’s £100 per hour to install free software.” Firefox is one of the world’s most popular web browsers. Reports say that, at the end of 2013, it had half a billion users globally on desktop computers and another 50 million on Android.

Where is the link?? If this was such news there would be a link provided. This story is so fishy....

 

[mike20021969]

Where is the link??

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26465203

Google search: Google Search Results

 

[Clams]

Where is the link?? If this was such news there would be a link provided. This story is so fishy....

Get out from under the tinfoil hat. Of course it was a real story.
Story even made it clear that they were charging for the "service" not for Firefox itself.
-W

 

[Recycle]

Get out from under the tinfoil hat. Of course it was a real story.
Story even made it clear that they were charging for the "service" not for Firefox itself.
-W

Over in UK I yet to hear it over at the US side. So there is no tinfoil hat...rather one should make more accurate where the story is being told from and not make it sounds like it has become world wide. Why else would one ask for a link. It's one thing to charge for the service it's another for making it sounds like it was for Firefox software. You go to a shop to have the software installed and you can guess they will charge for the service to do that. "NOTHING IS FREE"....is like taking your car to the service with a belt to be replaced but you already have the belt and thinking they will just do the replacing the belt for free and not charge for the labor to do that. It's called one needs to learn in this day and age to install and upgrade at some basic level to not get shafted by something like Dell did for the labor. They are equating the labor/service to the computer to the software which was actually free to get and download to start with. So this story in itself is already fishy to begin with.

 

[Adbear]

Over in UK I yet to hear it over at the US side. So there is no tinfoil hat...rather one should make more accurate where the story is being told from and not make it sounds like it has become world wide. Why else would one ask for a link. It's one thing to charge for the service it's another for making it sounds like it was for Firefox software. You go to a shop to have the software installed and you can guess they will charge for the service to do that. "NOTHING IS FREE"....is like taking your car to the service with a belt to be replaced but you already have the belt and thinking they will just do the replacing the belt for free and not charge for the labor to do that. It's called one needs to learn in this day and age to install and upgrade at some basic level to not get shafted by something like Dell did for the labor. They are equating the labor/service to the computer to the software which was actually free to get and download to start with. So this story in itself is already fishy to begin with.

Your analogy is flawed, There's difference between taking a pre-built system into a shop and asking them to install something and buying a system with software pre-installed. When we build systems we install customers software for free for them, we only charge extra if they want us to either do work on a machine bought elsewhere or they ask us to install software at a later date, you'll probably find that most smaller PC businesses will do this as it makes it easier for support if you know the software is installed and running before shipping the unit out.
But it's standard practice for the big companies such as HP and Dell to charge extra to either have extra software installed when you buy the system or to charge more to have the 'free' programs removed. That's not just in the UK. This is usually because the people in the factory have no clue about what they are doing and have to use a different image on the system, so they can't just ship an off the shelf unit and have to plug it in and image the drive again

 

[andy o]

Sure, Recycle could have easily googled it, but it's still bad form (to put it mildly) to copy-paste the whole article, let alone not link to it.

 

[Adbear]

Bad form by only your viewpoint, purposely built that way, dvd fans who are truly interested would sniff out or search for the entire article and pictures. Better known as a teaser.:agree:

How is it a 'teaser' when you cut and pasted the whole article? A teaser would have been to state the headline and then post a link

 

[andy o]

Bad form by only your viewpoint, purposely built that way, dvd fans who are truly interested would sniff out or search for the entire article and pictures. Better known as a teaser.:agree:

You know how in most forums (including this one) you can't just upload copyrighted music or videos? Same thing fundamentally. So yeah, "bad form" is putting it mildly.