Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: osv.org.au

Stories and comments across the archive that link to osv.org.au.

Comments · 4

  1. Re:Dupe by blind+monkey+3 · · Score: 0 · on BSA Software Piracy Fight Smacks of RIAA Crackdown

    This is still old but Three years after the event.

  2. Arrrrr righty then.... by LinuxGeek · · Score: 2, Interesting · on Microsoft Marketing to OS Pirates, Just Agree to Audits!

    Everyone knows, once you go Pirate you never go back. Free lovin' of something ( even as bad as windows vista) makes it hard to go back to payin' for it... Thats why I love Linux, versions range from expensive business server to cheap and loose floozy, your choice! :)

    Seriously though, how is this position not monopoly abuse by MS? Can other software companies adopt this position and still survive? Letting people steal your software, knowing about it, and then getting them to agree to a contract to keep using the stolen version. This must make people that have been busted by MS and the BSA feel pretty mad. When can they expect refunds of the fines they had to pay? And a public apology too?

  3. Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative · on Microsoft to Get Tough on License Dodgers

    http://www.osv.org.au/index.cgi?tid=91

    One of the hoariest linux switch stories is about Ernie Ball, a company that makes guitar strings. The BSA treated them miserably and tried to make an example of them with a court case and huge publicity. Ball retaliated by switching to Linux and launched their own publicity campaign aimed right back at Microsoft.

    Microsoft is between a rock and a hard place on this one. They could end up with a bunch more high profile switching-to-linux stories to contend with.

  4. as an Australian born... by toby · · Score: 4, Interesting · on Penguin Not Taking Flight Down Under
    I'd say you're pretty much right. M$ and most other US companies treat "the rest of the world" (Australia part of it) as a dumping ground for their junk, from movies to cars to wars to junk food to book and coffee chains... (Why the heck would an Australian buy their morning coffee from an American company instead of from the corner café? Can't Australians make coffee?)

    Australia has the unfortunate tendency to blindly accept these imports - software being a significant and costly example. The so-called "Free Trade Agreement" codifies and enforces this disastrous situation (thankyou Mr Howard), right down to "fixing" our patent system and making our continent safe for US multinationals. The inevitable, if unmentionable, corollary is that local interests (such as the independent developer you mentioned) are completely compromised, as everyone knew they would be (hence the widespread protests).

    Yet there are many talented Australians doing great work in Open Source. Thanks perhaps to its proximity to high-tech government and defense users, Canberra has produced many of the best known names in Linux and other free software projects - including Andrew Tridgell, Nick Piggin, and many others - and remains a hotbed of hardcore kernel hackers. In Victoria there are active Open Source representative groups and many intelligent supporters. However none of this has influenced public policy as much as one might hope.

    Yes, much more activism and lobbying is going to be required to eject Microjunk from the default purchasing roster, and from the IT mindset. But I am not sure things are so much better in the US - perhaps the mindless M$-centric view has simply been all-too-successfully exported. Just one more indignity ensuing from a decade of Conservative rule. The destruction wrought by the Howard Government was a major factor in my belief that the country was hopelessly regressing, and my decision to leave Australia for a more progressive and much less US-centric society. If they ever get rid of that government, and restore egalitarian policies, maybe I'll go back.