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How Pirated Software Impacts Free Software

Posted by kdawson on from the free-as-in-cracked dept.

jmglov writes "Dave Gutteridge has an unusual take on why people are not interested in saving money by using a free-as-in-beer OS like Linux or *BSD: because Windows is free. At least, that is an all-too-common perception, thanks to bundling and piracy. Bundling is a well-known problem to the adoption of open source operating systems, so Dave takes a look at the piracy issue in depth. His title may offend you, but his well-written article will most likely get you thinking hard about the question, 'how much does Windows cost?'"

3 of 530 comments (clear)

  1. Very true.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm going to post this anonymously for obvious reasons. I have a few Windows XP licenses, but they are all OEM XP Home/Media Center licences that came with the computers. Those systems were so crapified by the OEMs and/or in such a bad state (my wifes computer was a mess when I took control over it) that even reinstalling the OEM version would have been a major headache.

    I help exactly one person with an OEM XP Home machine and it gives more headaches than my custom installs. My custom installs are based on a Corporate Edition Windows XP Pro. Those never give problems unless it is hardware. Simply said: Windows XP Pro Corporate^WPirate Edition gives me better *value* for less money. It's the only software I pirate: all other programs are either free as in beer (iTunes) or free as in Freedom (OpenOffice, The Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird.....)

    Just to appease those that say I should switch to Linux: I'm typing this right now on Ubuntu Linux, but I have a long way to go to convert all machines that I maintain.

    1. Re:Very true.... by Cafe+Alpha · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I called Gateway in order to reinstall XP pro (that came with the machine - but the disk had been lost by the previous owner).

      No can do. I would have to pay $200+ for a replacement OEM disk (not even a real Windows disk by the way - you can't add foreign language support from the OEM image, you can't repair a damaged installation - it's just a fucking hard drive image).

      I still have the piece of paper with your license key and the hologram, I said. Not worth anything, they said. I called Microsoft, same answer.

      Luckily I had a Ghost backup. Ghost had crashed as it finished the last disk, but luckily the disk was readable. How likely is that? Crashed AFTER the the last sector wrote.

      My machine works again, but I still can't get Asian input support - the OEM never had that - joy!

  2. I just keep leading by example... by erroneus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Once in a while I can show someone Linux and they just use it. It doesn't matter if it's free or not. I just show them a better way. It doesn't always work but lately it's getting easier.

    On the laptop of a blonde college-girl, I installed F7 and then installed vmware server and client along with WindowsXP Corporate^WPirate Edition. (She calls it 'baby windows') From that platform, she runs all the stuff she needs or wants... Linux stuff for as much as possible and "baby windows" for anything she can't figure out. So far she's ecstatic about Linux... it doesn't crash, it doesn't slow down after it has been running a while and it doesn't get the spyware/malware crap that she managed to collect while running Windows. I have also given her other pointers when it comes to other activities such as music downloads... (simply, I advised her to NOT DO music downloads... share them on the school's LAN and if you can't find what you're looking for that way, ask any guy to download it for her...of course he will! She avoids the risk and the complication.)

    I recently introduced a very handy VMWare appliance (ESVA if you're interested) to my brother (Let's call him Microsoft Bob ... he's a Microsoft-centric developer and his name happens to be Robert...). While he didn't want to install VMWare Server, I was able to find a means of translating a VMWare machine to a MS Virtual PC machine so he could run it that way. After he got this thing up and running, I couldn't get him to shut up about exactly how cool and powerful this thing running Linux and free software really is.

    My point is, sometimes you just gotta find the right catch... ...and then there was this other guy who was actually spending MONEY on porn sites! I was aghast at how stupid that was... I installed Azureus on his machine and showed him "empornium" and a few other sites and told him to go to town and not to forget to cancel his secret credit cards.