If they all use the same behavior:

You can't buy my product unless you sign this contract which includes a license cost!

But depending on how the patent was granted, and allowed to be enforced - for example it was explicitly attached to the exact machine from that vendor - we'd still have that patent problem that the proprietary vendor could use their granted patent against the software applied on the OS hardware.

Attach the software patent to the specific hardware vendor and they're not allowed to enforce same software on other hardware - ok.... that's not too bad... still not right - but can be worked around with open source hardware.

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And if you didn't know the terms before paying, well, that's either false advertising or fraud, depending on the specifics.

False advertising is carried out by [Hollywood] film studios all the time: "Own it now on DVD" when they really mean "Own the DVD and a licence to view the film" - not the same at all, and they "wonder" why people don't understand copyright infringement.

cm

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