During the Q&A session at the end of my keynote at FOSDEM 2007, some people were discussion the issue of the “Windows Tax” on all PCs and laptops: Most vendors will not sell you hardware without Windows licence for fear of not being able to offer any Windows licences in the future.
The only known way to work against that tax at the moment is to ask for reimbursement of the tax from the vendor — a process that is not communicated, documented, or encouraged by the vendors for obvious reasons.
As there is no central repository for that kind of information, I offered FSFE’S Fellowship site for the purpose, and Tim Speetjens from Belgium was so kind to email us his experience to seed this repository.
The repository is located at http://www.fsfe.org/refund and we encourage you to also reclaim your Windows tax and share your experience with others: The section can be edited by all Fellows, and you can also send us your reports by email to fellowship@fsfeurope.org.
