Is this something we (as consumers of FreeBSD) need to be aware of?

[Wojciech Puchar]

> Maybe a common marketing and sales model comes from software
> to hardware too: You don't actually own the hardware! When
> you give money to the manufacturer (maybe through vendors
> or retailers), you receive hardware _plus_ a limited set
> of rights which you may exercise on that hardware, maybe
> for a limited time. By purchasing the hardware that way,
> you may even have "implicitely signed" a kind of agreement


anyway NOBODY are forced to buy micro-soft software.
Nobody is forced to buy a PC.

Doing this with PC market will result in larger market share for 
non-Wintel hardware.