Cem Kaner's Software Customer Bill of Rights has been making the blog rounds lately. Curiously missing are two things I've always considered an important part of this idea: 1) disclosure of all installed components, and 2) a reasonable mechanism by which all installed components can be removed ("uninstalled"). Such a bill of rights must protect users against malware, where a company can sneak a program that displays dissociated ads or sabotages competing products onto your computer and not remove it when you uninstall the original application. Less ominously, applications that do not completely remove themselves (intentionally or otherwise) could possibly leave behind bits that degrade the performance of the computer, outside of the user's immediate control.

Ed notices that disclosure of known defects would be difficult.