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OSIA Dismisses Gartner Linux Piracy Claim
Anonymous Coward writes "The Inquirer is reporting that a claim by Gartner that Linux desktops are used for pirated copies of windows has been dismissed by the Open Source Industry Association (OSIA). OSIA told The Sydney Morning Herald that 'if Gartner's conclusion that pre-installing Linux encouraged people to steal copies of Windows were correct.... It would be possible to state that pre-installing Windows encourages people to pirate application software.'"
I can see it happening, too. But "a lot"? Beats me. How do you quantify this? It could be 1% or 99% or anywhere in between. Gartner pulled their statistic out of their ass.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This raises another point, this report assumes that the current form of Mickey$oft piracy protection does not work(granted most people here could crack it in short order, but not the average id10T). So either everybody is installing pirated 2000 or NT4 version.
I buy them because I want a full install version, not a crappy bulk load.
I've read that it's possible to get Dells with FreeDOS instead of Windows, although that might only be true if you're a company ordering in bulk.
You can get desktops that way (if you look for them), but I don't think that you can get laptops without an operating system from Dell.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Yes you can, we do that at work.
:).
You can get PC's, Workstations and Servers without an OS preloaded or FreeDOS (on a bootable CD) but don't know about laptops though since we primarily don't use Dell laptops anymore and all our laptops are Windows based anyway (except for mine
Not sure if you need company account or not, but it's highly likely.
Yes this is about them here at the Dell website
Well back in 2002, the laptops weren't as popular as they are now. I felt I was stuck with either a piece of crap HP, Compaq, or Gateway if I didn't chose Dell. They made the fastest laptop with a Pentium 4M chip I could find. It's a great machine and I hope it will last me a few more years. Desktops have become much much more of a comodity than laptops. You still have a handful of good companies for laptops while you have hundreds of comparable choices for desktops.
You don't use Linux, do you?
The vast majority of digital cameras work fine with Linux. Even most of the ones (a dwindling number) that don't support the USB Mass Storage spec can be made to work through gPhoto.
For home movies, I hear that Kino isn't bad. I do't make movies so I can't say much on this.
As for newsletters, see below.
Scribus is much better than MS Publisher (which isn't hard, since Publisher is a piece of crap).
Give me a break. X has supported TrueType fonts for ages. Just copy them across and you're done.
I don't know, but I suspect that there are far fewer users of such software than you may think.
Did you try calling them and telling them you didn't accept the license agreement?
Although I know now adays Dell has some sort of bullshit license agreement built right into the BIOS and is displayed at first poweron.
"OK, colour me not too bright, but I cannot see why pre-installed Linux is being targeted here by Gartner - their claim doesn't seems to be, pre-installing Linux is the same as shipping the machine with no OS whatsoever."
It's very simple: Gartner comments on industry trends. Wal-Mart and other major retailers are selling a relatively huge number of PCs equipped with Linux. That's the trend, and that's what Gartner is commenting on. If Wal-Mart were selling non-bootable PCs with no OS whatsoever, then Gartner might have written a report focusing on that.
I think the Linux community is taking this way too personally. There is a difference between cause and effect and blame. Of course people are buying those Wal-Mart Lindows PCs so they can avoid the Microsoft tax and load up a copy of Windows from a friend -- although it's naturally not stated overtly, that's the whole point. But this is not something that Linus Torvalds or anybody running Linux should take personally. If people choose to see this as an issue of "blame," then blame Wal-Mart and the other retailers who recognize a marketing opportunity when they see it, or blame those who'd use this Gartner report to promote an agenda.
"Oh - and then, shock horror, the opensource community comes back with: "We don't steal from you" (probably true on the whole) "and those who buy Linux desktops don't steal from you either" (probably, at least, significantly false)."
Agreed 100%. The OS community's umgrage is misdirected. And so what if Wal-Mart is selling a buttload of Linux-loaded PCs to customers who are loading Windows? Big deal, no more of a big deal than all those copyrighted MP3 files sitting on Slashdotters' PCs across the land. Not much difference in my book between the Wal-Mart customer who wants to save $50 by using his brothers' copy of XP vs. the Slashdotter who's sourcing music via P2P as a "social protest" to "make a statement about overpriced music."
"Oh - for the purposes of this comment it has been assumed that the independant research company Gartner is independently researching for the independent entity of Microsoft."
Precisely. Analyst firms will occasionally be commissioned by third parties to do reports and studies, but they remain independent.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
The modem and sound card didn't work out of the box and were one of the more difficult to get working with Linux, even for a Linux veteran like me. The resolution on the video card was also very low and difficult to fix. I ended up completely installing a new distribution.
The PC came with a disk of windows drivers for its non-standard modem, sound card, and video card. You can't honestly say that vendor expected anyone to keep that Linux distro on their machine.
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I just ordered a herd of Dell's. I could have ordered them with the following options: Windows 2003 Server, Redhat 9, no OS. Well guess what I did? The machines destined to run Windows were ordered with Windows. I considered ordering those machines without the OS, not because I was going to pirate it, but because I could buy Windows from CDW for $100 cheaper than Dell. I ultimately decided that $100 was a fair price to save the install time. On the Linux machines, I ordered those "No OS" because we use Debian, not Redhat, and Dell was charging $199 for Redhat!!!
Weren't they payed before by Microsoft to come up with a "study" of TCO.
0 -20-006-04-OP&tbovrmode=3
;)
Do a search on Google: "Microsoft payed Gartner" and you'll see.
"Is the Gartner Group just a Microsoft Mouthpiece?" this is an article from 1999 http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-1
Companies and "groups" don't change, they evolve
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore