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Ballmer Says 90% of Chinese Users Pirate Software
jbrodkin writes "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used the official state visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao as an opportunity to complain that 90% of Microsoft software users in China didn't pay for the products. The comments were part of a discussion with Barack Obama and the Chinese president about intellectual property protection. According to a White House transcript, Obama said in a press conference that 'we were just in a meeting with business leaders, and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft pointed out that their estimate is that only 1 customer in every 10 of their products is actually paying for it in China.' Obama didn't detail any specific measures the US and China would take to help Microsoft and other vendors fighting software piracy. 'The Chinese government has, to its credit, taken steps to better enforce intellectual property,' Obama said. 'We've got further agreement as a consequence of this state visit. And I think President Hu would acknowledge that more needs to be done.' Microsoft did not say how it calculated the statistic that 90% of Chinese users aren't paying for Microsoft software."
AN OPEN LETTER TO CHINA
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to CHINA
To me, the most critical thing in the CHINA market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a CHINESE computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the CHINA market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the CHINA market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
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 CHINA makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of CHINESE 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. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What CHINESE can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in CHINESE software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to CHINA. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on CHINESE software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give CHINA a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the CHINA market with good software.
Bill Gates
General Partner, Micro-Soft
John
Bill Gates, 1998: "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."
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-212942.html
Bill Gates, 2007: "It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not."
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article2098235.ece
Steve Ballmer, 2001: "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."
"Microsoft CEO takes launch break with the Sun-Times" (1 June 2001) Chicago Sun Times
Barack Obama, 2011: "So we were just in a meeting with business leaders, and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft pointed out that their estimate is that only one customer in every 10 of their products is actually paying for it in China. And so can we get better enforcement, since that is an area where America excels -- intellectual property and high-value added products and services."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/19/press-conference-president-obama-and-president-hu-peoples-republic-china
The numbers, 2009: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/software-piracy-in-china/
Microsoft wants hegemony in China over free (and freedom-respecting) options like GNU/Linux. It has always viewed piracy as a way to achieve this goal, but it doesn't have any real plan to turn those pirated copies of Windows and MS Office into revenue. Are they changing strategies and trying to muscle China now? Or is the U.S. gov't playing hardball for its own reasons? Or is it all just bullshit sabre-rattling? A real crackdown on Windows bootlegging would almost certainly make GNU/Linux the dominant platform in China. Parts of the Chinese gov't have pushed the Red Flag Linux distro in the past (specifically to avoid Windows licensing costs in Internet cafes), and there has been plenty of talk about the arrogance of Microsoft and the West, along with fears of potential backdoors in Windows. I'm sure the Chinese would prefer to be distributing a homegrown distro rather than having to pay up when Microsoft and the U.S. gov't come to collect.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms