About

An action by AFUL

The goal of action No More Racketware (read details in EN ES FR) is to help you avoid paying for software you don't want when you buy a computer.

This freedom of choice, which can be easily set up and used, would allow alternative software, in particular libre software, to be on the market on equal footing with those software prefered by the computer manufacturer. The consumer will thus be more easily able, if such is his/her wish, to decide to use libre software and open formats. For this reason, this action is promoted by the French-speaking Association of Libre software Users (AFUL). Many other organizations have stood up with AFUL in the past years, especially in the libre software community but also among consumer associations. Today, organizations support the current petition.

Interview us!

Who are you?

We are a fifteen-year old group of French-speaking people who try to eradicate this commercial bundling technique that computer producers and vendors have been practicing for almost fifteen years. (more about AFUL in english)

What do you request?

We want people to be able to buy computers with optional software.

Do you mean you want vendors to additionally offer computers with no software?

No. Many people want software preinstalled. That is fine. We do not mind. We just happen to like other software than those preinstalled, so we simply do not want to pay for them when we buy a computer: we want software optionality for all computers.

What do you mean, "other software"?

Well, some of us prefer other versions of Windows™. And many of us use GNU-Linux or free BSD family instead of Windows™ (most flavours of GNU/Linux or free BSD operating system come with a whole lot of software, most of them free to use or modify, and most of them additionally free of charge).

Sounds great! But do other people also want preinstalled software to be optional?

We launched a petition" in 2006, and over 39,000 people signed it. Well, that's at least 39,000 people that want software optionality too!

What does "racketware" mean?

In French, we call bundled preinstalled software "racketiciels". The English equivalent is "racketware": because bundling forces you to pay for the software even if you do not want them, it has some similarity with racket.

And how do you implement optionality?

For instance with an activation key: a big number with many digits, that you need to type on the first time you run the piece of software. If you don't pay for the software license, you don't get the key and so you can't use the software. It's as simple as that. Drawback: you then also don't get that glittering little sticker that authenticates your software license. You therefore need to decorate your computer all by yourself.

Do you request anything else?

No. Ahem, yes: we would like vendors to comply with their obligation to clearly indicate which piece of software is complete and which is just a test version, and also to mention the price for the computer and the price for each piece of software separately. If they do that, we will not necessarily have to go to court and get so much money back that the entire commercial software industry will shortly collapse.