Windows Refund Day (1999)
I’m going to get downvoted into oblivion for this, but as a teenager who remembers when this happened, this always struck me as the absolute dumbest idea and the most useless of performative actions.<p>First, it was sponsored by a VC-backed company (that had hired a documentary crew to capture their success, the ill-fated VA Linux Systems (which eventually became known as Geeknet) and the pretty poor propaganda documentary “Revolution OS” that managed to just sort of forget the whole dot com collapse thing)), so although I know the LUGs were part of it, this was a marketing event by a company looking to boost their IPO. I didn’t know any of that at the time, but looking back, it’s so clear this was just yet another VA Linux publicity event.<p>Second, to anyone who wasn’t part of the group “protesting” — that is, outsiders — all you see is a bunch of weirdos dressed up with picket signs outside a sales office (they didn’t even go to Redmond) to demand action, only to be greeted what seem to be very polite corporate people with a sign and lemonade.<p>Third, it fundamentally changed nothing. It took the DoJ agreements to lessen the hold Microsoft had one some OEMs, but it really took the proliferation of Chromebooks (which was predicated by the short-lived netbook era) for manufacturers to get cheaper deals on Windows licenses and to offer more customizations of OS choice at purchase. That still had zero impact on Linux on the desktop adoption rates.<p>And sure, most bigger OEMs if you buy direct will let you customize a machine with no OS and sometimes with Ubuntu, but the Ubuntu XPS 13 isn’t much cheaper than the Windows variant (max $50), you just get more of an assurance that there is some sort of driver support for your system (although usually not for stuff like fingerprint readers).<p>So like, all I remember is that 21 years ago, some angry nerds showed up to an office park parking lot, got some free lemonade, were told politely to leave, and then went home with their cardboard signs screaming victory. When they didn’t get a refund. Didn’t change OEM terms, and had zero impact on OS adoption. OS adoption changed over the years but it wasn’t because of anything any of the people in that movement did, it was because of Apple and Google.