Pirating Software? Choose Microsoft!

An anonymous reader writes "ArsTechnica is running a story regarding comments by Microsoft Business Group President Jeff Raikes, who had a pithy comment on the subject of software piracy. His view is that, should software piracy occur, Microsoft's desire is that the pirated software should be theirs. Potentially, in the future, they could then convert the illegal users from the 'dark side' into legit users who obtain licenses. 'We understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people who are using our products. What you hope to do over time is convert them to licensing the software.' Obviously Microsoft prefers the market to use their software even if it's pirated, rather than the alternative: the use of free software."

Comments

The link

[thammoud]

missed the first couple of sentences.

So that explains WGA relaxation?

[Gr8Apes]

Does this surprise anyone? An installed base is marketing base. If people have pirated your OS instead of installing a competing product, the only issue you have is getting them to pay for it instead of convincing them to switch. Seems the former is much easier than the latter from all experiences so far. You also have the ability to sell them additional packages for your system without having to develop/sell such product supporting third party software. Another win, even if you can't convince them to pay for the OS to begin with.

I recall in the late 80s early 90s MS almost encouraged piracy, in an effort to kill off a slew of alternate OSes.

That's so "nice" of them...

[blcamp]

The "logic" behind those comments vary little from the neighborhood crack dealer who gives the first "hit" for free.

Get you on the habit, get you hooked, then pay through the nose... so to speak.

Re:That's so "nice" of them...

[mbook]

The BSA's latest study says $200 billion in software will be pirated in the next 4 years. Is software piracy "theft" like robbery is "theft"? If the software publisher prefers people to steal their software rather than use alternatives, how is that "theft"? Does the jewelry store prefer that their diamonds get stolen rather than having the thief wear cubic zirconia? http://www.bsa.org/globalstudy/upload/2005%20Pirac y%20Study%20-%20Official%20Version.pdf [PDF]

Still not gonna do it.

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I'm running a pirated version of Gentoo, and that's where I'm staying.

Re:Still not gonna do it.

[manno]

I think that's what I'm going to tell people about OpenOffice.org. I'm just going to say it's a super premium software package that costs upwards of $1000, and that I'm giving them a pirated version.

When I tell people that I refuse to install a pirated version of MS office on their PC's they get peeved at me, and when I install a free alternative they give it 5 seconds, don't try to learn it, and get a pirated version of MS Office from someone else. Furthering Microsoft's hegemony.

Maybe if I tried to sell OO.o, with a pitch like.

"I don't even have a copy of that piece of junk(MS Office) I use a more robust office package for the business, I got it for a song at $1,100 per seat. I can let you bum a license off me for free."

But these are friends mostly, and I hate being dishonest particularly with people I choose to do favors for. If only I had the soul of a MS marketing director...

-manno

Alternatives?

[Applekid]

So, if I wanted to pirate a readily-available closed-source proprietary operating system for my PC other than Windows, what would I pick?

Drug dealer methods

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Here in Brazil, Sérgio Amadeu, head of ITI (Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia da Informação, Portuguese for National Information Technology Institute), claimed that Microsoft tactics are those of a drug dealer: provide the stuff for free or nearly free, get the "customer" to be addicted, and then get money out of him. He was legally threatened by Microsoft for saying so. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7654.

Death to pirates!

[jmorris42]

Which is precisely why Free Software/Open Source folk need to be even more anal retentive than the BSA regarding software piracy. Zero tolerance! Report em all. Take piracy off the table as an option and we can make some major inroads from people who can't afford Microsoft and other commercial products now. And later they wouldn't bother switching from something that they already know and is free.

There really isn't an excuse to pirate anymore. In days gone by there just wasn't an option for people who couldn't afford software that cost far more than the hardware, especially in the developing world, starving students, etc. But now we can offer those people a safe, legal and effective alternative. Piracy is just unfair competition for us. :) So lets help stamp it out. Microsoft wants to make WGA even more locked down? Great! How can we help!

Re:Death to pirates!

[jmorris42]

> and to do so, I know of 'some students', who have pirated the various programs.

Find a vendor who doesn't offer a student discount. Oh, you don't want the crippled student version? It does everything you need to pass the course, so don't use that watermark on every page to justify stealing the full edition.

> please don't give me Gimp when I ask for Photoshop.

If you can AFFORD Photoshop, great! Many people who edit photographs professionally believe the price is more than offset by their increased productivity. But if you can't afford Photoshop you have no right to steal it. Don't you even try justifying it either. Try Paint Shop Pro if you just can't learn The GIMP. PSP is well regarded and much less expensive.

Re:Death to pirates!

[ajs318]

You aren't screwing The System at all by pirating a proprietary application that you were never going to buy anyway. All you're doing is proving you're dependent on The System. And they already know that.

If, on the other hand, you actually applied yourself to learning how to use a competing, Open Source application instead of their proprietary one (sure, the keyboard shortcuts and menu items may not be in the same place, and the procedures to accomplish certain tasks might be a little different -- are you really telling me you are so fucking thick that you can't learn the new ones?), you would be doing something to screw The System. You'd be breaking your dependency on The System.

Microsoft have driven competitors out of business by tolerating piracy. Thanks to closed protocols which make for poor interoperability, it's more attractive to use a Microsoft product than a competing product. And ease of piracy means that, for those who are prepared to do it, all software is effectively available gratis; price is not an issue. Thus, "everybody" pirates MS Office, and vendors of alternative office software lose out on sales. Now, if it were technically impossible (or just highly undesirable) to pirate MS Office, then maybe we'd see competing office suites.

Open Source Software throws another spanner in the works. Sun can't be driven out of business by Microsoft's tolerance of piracy, since their bottom line isn't affected by people not using OpenOffice.org; which is why Microsoft hate OSS so.

Validation?

[Hemogoblin]

I often hear that people pirate PC games to try them out and see if they enjoy them, and then buy later. It appears that Microsoft is in a sense indirectly giving this argument validity. I.e. They think its better for us to try out their products, see if we like them and buy later, rather than using their competitors' software. Feel free to correct my logic if I'm reading this wrong.

Re:is this how CS students make friends? :P

[dattaway]

Well, it is a crime to pirate software, so let's start calling the police. Most people call 911 when a crime is committed, right?

"911, what is your emergency?"
"My neighbor just pirated Microsoft Office."
"what?"
"My neighbor is pirating software!"
*click*

Re:Hmm... fairly obvious I'd say

[morgan_greywolf]

Not only is not news, it hasn't been news for a long time. Here's what Bill Gates said in 1998 about software piracy (about 9 years ago):

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." -- Bill Gates at University of Washington "town hall" meeting in 1998

So, no, despite what TFA says, it is not the case that Raikes' words "do not appear to echo the sentiments of his company..."

Software `piracy' == theft?

[geert]

This is is a nice opportunity to point out that `unauthorized copying equals theft' cannot be true.

Ever heard e.g. a car dealer say: `We don't like people stealing cars, but if they do steal cars, we'd like them to steal ours'??

Or Joe Sixpack: `I don't like people stealing money, but if they do, please steal mine'?

Re:Not gonna happen

[networkBoy]

Pirate Office or suffer the minor inconviences of OO.o [...] almost nobody who pirates is a heavy user most would find OO.o more than adequate for their needs I have at least one case where this is not true.
My wife is working on her masters thesis. OO.o is simply not compatible enough with MS office to be usable. A couple years ago I made a big push to go legit on all my apps. This meant dumping or paying for many tools I use regularly. I own Premiere 6 and PS6, but I was using newer versions. Dumped the newer versions. I was using many instances of windows not licensed, thus having a nice homogeneous network. Now I have a couple win2KPro machines and a couple WinXP Pro machines, my server was migrated to SOL18 (hey, it works for my needs perfectly), and my kids PCs are now running ubuntu and Wine for the reader rabbit software they so love.
When it came down to office I tried to migrate to OO.o because of the rather enormous cost of MS office Pro. No dice. Popwerpoint and its OO.o equiv were horribly incompatible. Word and it's equivalent had irreconcilable differences. I simply owned up to having to buy a copy and purchased the student edition, bummer it can't be in two places. I acquired an old site license for office 97 and am using that on all the windows machines other than the wife's notebook.

Until there is a good office suite with exchange compatibility there will be real trouble getting people off windows.
Until the linux community comes to an agreement and throws their support to a desktop linux distro and quits with the religious wars there will be trouble getting people off windows (linspire/ubunto maybe?).
Until the random hardware from the random computer store plugs and plays on the above intra-distro supported desktop there will be trouble getting people off windows.

Face it. While we can all have our boutique distro, if you want joe sixpack to use linux it the community must standardize on 1 (one) window manager, 1 (one) desktop, and 1 (one) functional application suite. Joe doesn't like choices, joe likes feeling safe with the default choice.
-nB