MS Gives Free Licenses To Oppressed Nonprofits

victorl19 writes "Microsoft is vastly expanding its efforts to prevent governments from using software piracy inquiries as a pretext to suppress dissent. It plans to provide free software licenses to more than 500,000 advocacy groups, independent media outlets and other nonprofit organizations in 12 countries with tightly controlled governments, including Russia and China."

Comments

Description is misleading

[gratuitous_arp]

It plans to provide no cost, no freedom software licenses to more than 500,000 advocacy groups

Free can mean more than one thing. Gratis MS products enables a lower cost of entry into slavery.

Re:Point of no return

[SigmundFloyd]

Consider a badly-behaved child. You punish them, and try to change their behavior. After some time, their behavior DOES change, but you now ignore the improvement and continue punishing them for their past misdeeds.
Is this fair?

MSFT executives are not children, they are adults who are fully aware of the consequences of their actions. This is why your comparison doesn't hold.

If there's no reward for improving your behavior, why would you ever WANT to improve?

I don't know about you, but I try to behave well because I think it's the good thing to do towards my fellow humans. But then I'm an atheist, so I don't need heaven and hell to scare me into being good.