11.27.10
Windows is Being Devalued
Summary: GNU/Linux continues to keep the cost of Windows very low (or at zero) in countries like China and Microsoft clings onto Internet Explorer (IE) as Windows seller owing to lock-in like ActiveX
The profit which Microsoft makes from Windows is declining and Microsoft began cheating in its reports to make it look like less severe a problem. One reason is GNU/Linux in devices and another is GNU/Linux in poorer nations, where Microsoft almost encourages counterfeiting as means of suppressing the adoption of Free/libre (and legal) software.
Every now and then in China we find that Microsoft attacks the very same people who help adoption of Windows, e.g. by spreading illegal copies of Windows. “Microsoft settles with Chinese Internet Cafes,” says this report but only “at a discount,” writes Glyn Moody, “what a surprise…”
CAPITIALIST RUNNING DOG software outfit Microsoft has settled a copyright infringement lawsuit in the Glorious People’s Republic of China.
The Vole took a leading Internet café company in Guangdong Province to court claiming it was running unlicensed copies of its software.
Tonecan Network Communication Company, the biggest Internet café chain in Dongguan, signed an agreement with Microsoft Tuesday in Dongguan Intermediate People’s Court.
Under the deal the Internet outfit will buy 700 pieces of copyrighted Windows software and pay 100,000 yuan ($15,053) in compensation to Microsoft.
For Microsoft to pretend that it is against counterfeiting in China is almost like pretending that it’s against the use of Windows under GNU/Linux (in machines that have already been migrated to GNU/Linux anyway). A few years ago Microsoft tried to forbid virtualisation of certain versions of Windows, until it gave up and allowed it to go on almost without restrictions. “Microsoft shuts down IT pro requests to allow IE virtualization” says this other new report, but judging by history, this too will be permitted when nobody wants to use IE anyway.
IT pros and partners want to use application virtualization tools to run Internet Explorer. But Microsoft forbids the practice and last week put its big foot down on one application virtualization company for using the technology to offer IE on the Web.
One of the common uses of application virtualization tools, such as VMware’s ThinApp, is to run legacy or even multiple versions of IE on Windows 7. But Microsoft does not support virtualizing IE because it is part of Windows, and the company does not want it to be abstracted from the operating system.
This article says about IE that Microsoft “does not want it to be abstracted from the operating system.” Are antitrust authorities paying attention? █
“Microsoft is, I think, fundamentally an evil company.”
–Former Netscape Chairman James H. Clark
