Comments on: The Many Signs That GNU/Linux Grew Significantly in 2007 – Part 2

By: Needs Sunlight

Needs Sunlight — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:10:54 +0000

@AlexH: It applies to established markets, especially where there is a monopoly. By encouraging use of the product (especially the proprietary data formats) the monopoly is maintained. For MS, economically, politically, maintaining the monopoly is more valuable than *anything* else that can be done. If the monopoly weakens then charging monopoly rents is not possible. Worse, there can be new entrants to the market, preventing or at least making it more difficult to re-establish the monopoly.

So for MS, encouraging piracy with one hand is a must and using its BSA/FAST fingers on the other to shake down businesses into signing exclusive MS-only out of court settlements is of paramount importance.

The worst (for MS) that could happen would be for enough OEMs to break free that other systems and packages get shipped. Then the comparisons start again, after years of effort to ban reviews and benchmarking. Red Hat, Canonical, and even Apple have MS execs in a panic. The large question is what place in society remains for MSFTers and Gold Partners?

By: G. Michaels

G. Michaels — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:58:54 +0000

Did you ever apologize to the journalists you smeared by claiming they were bribed because they received laptops with Windows 7 for review

No. He’s already using that “article” as another invalid backreference, as in “we recently showed how Microsoft bribes journalists…” and so on.

He’s also desperately asking his groupies for more proof of Microsoft edits to Wikipedia. “I CAN HAZ MOAR W-E EDITZ PLZ”. But stay tuned for next week, when he’ll do the “we’ve already shown how Microsoft PR cronies rewrite history by editing Wikipedia” thing.

I’m starting to think a good 85% or so of his material is really nothing more than backreferences to things that are nothing more than bunk.

As a general statement on how /not/ to be effective at FOSS advocacy, and the attention he gets for it, I think it’s fascinating

Note: writer of this comment adds absolutely nothing but stalking and personal attacks against readers, as documented here.

By: Gentoo User

Gentoo User — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:54:01 +0000

Roy, did you ever apologize to the journalists you smeared by claiming they were bribed because they received laptops with Windows 7 for review, even after they attempted to explain things to you, or are you still too busy appending snippets of red text to people's comments? Note: comment arrived from a witch hunter that does not even use GNU/Linux.

By: AlexH

AlexH — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:19:54 +0000

@Roy: I can see how that applies to new markets, but not so much established ones: the people “pirating” Windows in this part of the world do so mostly because they’re a. commercial “pirates” (in which case they’re likely charging [part of] the money, just not giving it to MS), b. people “upgrading” (since their PC came with windows), or c. home hobbyists building PCs. A normal consumer would never buy a “naked” PC; they barely get the chance.

Obviously foiling a. puts money right back into MS coffers without changing the deal much for the consumer. b & c. are pretty small time and likely don’t make much difference. I suspect the situation in India, at least in the urban areas, is basically the same.

On the other hand, I’m not sure this is bad news per se: if Apple teaches us anything, it’s that people are willing to pay a premium for something which isn’t MS. GNU/Linux just isn’t quite that product yet.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:06:06 +0000

It's the opposite of pump-n-dump. “They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

--Bill Gates

Dump-then-pump (money).

By: Tux

Tux — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:55:47 +0000

They still call it FREEWARE !!!

They call me and say “Is this xyz is freeware ? We dont want anything M$, its too costly…” LOL

By: AlexH

AlexH — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:44:26 +0000

I would love someone to do some actual research into that. I’m not sure “free Windows” is as much a myth as it is people being knowingly cheeky; I know a few people who – once their dodgy copy of Windows blew up (virus, WGA, whatever) – went out and bought a copy of the “real thing”.

I know very few non-computer hobbyists who converted to a free OS, even with cajoling. If you play games, a free OS is useless. If you run certain apps (e.g., Sage), a free OS is basically useless.

I think it’s pretty optimistic to think that people will flock to [Ff]ree distros in the face of having to shell out £80 or whatever to MS. Of course a good number will, but I doubt the majority would right now.

Sadly this is going to be an extremely hard problem to solve, and at this point I suspect cracking down on the pirates would do little than fill Microsoft’s coffers further.

By: Jo Shields

Jo Shields — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:14:43 +0000

Good!

I want to see Windows licensing pursued MERCILESSLY.

Eliminate the myth of “free Windows”, and it’ll make a HUGE change to the software landscape

By: Tux

Tux — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:18:20 +0000

MS *is* cracking down on piracy big time in India. I have received called from many offices saying they have switched to Linux/OpenOffice to save themself from MS axe. People who would crib about using anything other than MS Office 2007 (pirated one), no matter how much we explain them the danger of MS Office – they use to complain how sucky Open Office is … are now switching to OpenOffice fast !! LOL !!