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Microsoft Licensing Fee Intended To Reduce Hobbyists
BokLM writes "Microsoft's Amir Majidimehr, Corporate VP of the Windows Digital Media Division, explained at a DRM conference in London why they require a license fee from device makers." From the article: "According to Amir, the fee is not intended to recoup the expenses Microsoft incurred in developing their DRM, or to turn a profit. The intention is to reduce the number of licensees to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
I'm reminded of a movie called Revolution OS which enlightened me to Gates' history with hobbyists.
Remember the open letter to hobbyists that Gates penned on the third of February, nineteen seventy six?
A choice selection of his letter:
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour. Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid? Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written.
And for those of you that hate reading the word of Gates, I'll paraphrase the above for you in fewer words:
Remember, don't you dare try to write your own software. Leave that to me. Then buy it from me. Any resistance to this shows that you are ruining the software industry as we know it. If we fool everyone into thinking they need to pay us money for software, then we can rape the world, are you blind?
Look what you've done! You horrible hobbyists. You steal software. You make technology do what you want it to do. You write and distribute freely. For shame.
*Gates shakes rolled up newspaper at the world*
No DRM for you. No. Bad hobbyist. Get.
This is why we can't have nice things.
My work here is dung.