Hanno's blog

Recently there were some News that Lenovo does not like Linux any more. This was supported by comments like this at Lenovoblogs (by a Lenovo engineer):

»Again, what’s the incentive for us to start providing all of this intellectual property for free to the Linux community? You may say it drives support for Linux on ThinkPads and people would buy more ThinkPads as a result. I think that’s a dubious assertion at best.«
(the subject was driver support for switchable graphics on modern thinkpads and brings up some common urban legends about linux and driver support)

Sadly, I experienced one more place where Lenovo seems to shift away from a Linux friendly viewpoint: I tried to return the windows license of my new Thinkpad with a pre-made form by Lenovo itself (I got this from someone else by eMail, not from Lenovo directly). In the net, you can find tons of reports that it was easy for people to get money back for their windows licenses by Lenovo.

Though what I got was this:
»Leider können wir Ihrem Wunsch nach Rückerstattung der Kosten für das auf Ihrem Lenovo Produkt vorinstallierte Microsoft-Betriebssystem nicht entsprechen, da das Betriebssystem aus unserer Sicht einen integralen Bestandteil des jeweiligen Lenovo Produkts darstellt.«
(rough translation: We won't refund your windows-license, because we think it's an integral part of the product)

I find it hard to understand why Lenovo makes this shift. When running around on linux conferences in recent months, the number of thinkpads is hughe. While many other vendors shift to a much more free software friendly behaviour (think of AMD/ATI), Lenovo seems to go the different direction. It's especially strange because Lenovo is probably one of the few vendors that has a notable market share in the linux community.

By the way, I welcome any hints how I should continue with the windows refunding. I'd prefer not to capitulate yet (like I did with my last laptop by Samsung), and I assume the law is clearly on my side.

Update: As some of you asked, here is the form by Lenovo, though you'll probably just get the same reply I got.

Probably interesting, here you can find all EULAs from Microsoft. They are quite clear on the subject and say that you MUST return the windows license to the vendor if you don't agree to the EULA.

In the meantime, I wrote several messages about the issue to various people and instutitions. The FSFE is also working on the subject.