Software Customer Bill of Rights

Cem Kaner of Badsoftware.com has written up a Software Customer Bill of Rights. Very appropriate considering our recent stories about Microsoft viruses, Dell's BIOS-clickwrap licensing agreement, etc.

And then later, on the news,

[blitzoid]

"Today a local man was arrested for screaming at employees of a local 'Best Buy' store after they refused to sign a contract he had printed out. Bystanders claimed that he refused to buy any of their products unless they signed said document, and that NOT signing would be a grave injustice. Our sources have told us that he is currently being held in Bellview Psychiatric Hospital, and is undergoing observation."

I was going to read it

[Anonymous Coward]

But then IE crashed.





Just kidding! I'd never use IE.

Herbal Essence

[hackwrench]

You must not have seen the herbal essence commercials then.

Re:Live up to marketing????

[ch-chuck]

My tape drive advertised it's transfer rate as "Up To 60 megabytes / minute", and just like the claim truthfully says, it has never exceeded that amount.

Re:What "Microsoft viruses?"

[Monkey-Man2000]

How is it Microsoft's fault if users run the attachment? Is it Linus Torvalds' fault when there's a sendmail hole? Is that suddenly a "Linux hole?"
No, it's a GNU/Linux hole. :)

A shorter version

[argoff]

How about the right of customers to copy distribute and modify freely. The other problems will take care of themselves.

Re:And then later, on the news,

[McAddress]

sounds like rms has a clone that buys software

This is great...

[bob670]

but how would we move forward. I think our best bet would be if we all chipped in and bought our own lobbyist, and maybe a senator or two? Someone go dig up those articles on micro-payments and figure out how long it would take us to buy a democrat (no way we can afford our own republican). And no one bring up any third parties, they can't even get on to T.V. for debates, let alone push consumer rights. And we should probably circumvent PayPal for this idea since we know eBay and any compnay they are connected with give up user information at the drop of fax, and once we bring forth this kind of heretical talk Bill and Steve-O will be on the warpath. Think of it now, in addition to the Halloween papers we could have the Labor Day papers...this is gonna' be great!!!

Re:Wishful thinking

[cyril3]

whole organization full of screwballs, all making noise ... even Microsoft would have to pay attention

Not sure about that. Years of noise on /. hasn't had an appreciable effect on the Great Satan.

Re:Sorry....

[rifter]

"But this is America. Consumer rights are secondary to business rights..." ... and making things better is secondary to making smug, cynical statements.

You just described Microsoft's business model. Why make decent software when you can make smug, cynical statements instead? What a country! :)