You may have seen, or used the fantastic online Dell service that lets you put together a PC with a variety of custom components, that service also offers stuff like paid support and certain preloaded software installs. A seemingly new feature of that service also offers Mozilla Firefox at a whopping £16 ($27) asking price if you want it preloaded onto the system.
Click image for a more detailed version.
A reader of The Register contacted the site saying he was asked to fork out the money for the convenience. According to The Register, after their enquiries to Mozilla, sources at the company replied that they had launched a preliminary consultation with legal teams, but this process was at "an early stage." and added:
Mozilla is looking into this as it does not comply with terms and conditions policy. I’m afraid we can’t really answer your questions until Mozilla hears from legal teams.
As pointed out by The Register, Mozilla has a Trademark Policy which covers distribution terms of Firefox.
The browser, which is free and open source, takes around ten minutes to install on the slowest systems that support it, and is so straight forward that anyone actually looking for it probably has the knowledge to install software as well.
While we know that OEMs are in the business of making money off bloatware that is usually preloaded on systems, this particular "service" probably takes the whole concept a little too far.
Dell could not be reached for comment at the time of publishing.
Source & Image: The Register
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