How Pirated Software Impacts Free Software

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?'"

Very true....

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.

Re:Very true....

I've seen many people just loose their OEM disk (or just never got one). How should those people be handled? Is Piracy still piracy if it's the same version as what was there before?

Re:Very true....

Well, that's one of the common problems. (I'm the AC from the parent post) My wife did not have the OEM CD anymore, if she ever had one. The XP Home license sticker is still on the machine, but now it runs Win XP Pro in another language (it's English now)

I'd be willing to bet that Microsoft, the BSA and the court systems are going to rule this installation "pirated" and I can't blame them. However, what was I to do? This machine was reinstalled way before Ubuntu became viable. (I reinstalled it in 2004 or so, I think...)

Many new computers don't even come with CDs anymore: the waiter in my favourite restaurant has an Acer and one day we came to talk about his computer. A quite nice system but he has tons of problems. I suggested a reinstall, but he doesn't have the CDs. I'd say I'd help him if he finds the CD. I'm not going to hand out copies of my Corporate Edition CD to other people. I don't want it to get blacklisted by Microsoft.

Re:This may be a "grey" area ...

And you don't get the vendor specific apps.

Downside?

Re:This may be a "grey" area ...

Codecs are a big deal too - for example, a clean install Windows XP is not capable of playing DVDs.

What's the sociology of stupid vendor software?

I'd love to understand the sociology behind the fact that computer makers put their own name on poorly designed software. Don't the computer makers have anyone smart enough to understand their crud software is self-destructive? Are they so stupid they don't know their software is poorly designed?

I guess that often the non-technical people at technically-oriented companies don't know and don't care what they do. For them, it's just a job. For a technically knowledgeable person, their work is often a satisfying intellectual challenge. But non-technical people seem to be part of an incompatible culture; they lead somewhat robotic lives in which things don't have to work.

How else to explain Toshiba's brainless slogan, "In touch with tomorrow"? Woooooo--oooooo. Spacey. Do Toshiba managers smoke dope? A better slogan would be "In touch with reality."

I once asked a Toshiba technical support representative for tomorrow's stock quotes. Apparently the company has no special connection with tomorrow, unfortunately, in spite of the fact that they say they do, every time I turn on my laptop.

Let's start a campaign to move all the non-technical managers of technical companies into retirement, where they can watch the blinking clocks on their VRCs.

Re:Very true....

They usually charge extra for the disk anymore. They now like to use a separate partition on the HDD to store the restore image. It's frequently accessible via a boot menu.

I've never gotten a good answer about what's supposed to be done when the HDD dies out of warranty.

Depending on your make/model or bitchiness level, many of the OEM's will ship you a disk. . . for a price.

Re:Very true....

If it's anything like the Acer Laptop I just bought, there's an 8 Gig partition at the beginning of the drive. You change some setting in the BIOS, and when it books, it resets the hard drive back to factory settings. Haven't tried it yet (and maybe won't for a while), but the option is there.

Re:Very true....

If it's anything like the Acer Laptop I just bought, there's an 8 Gig partition at the beginning of the drive.

There's at least two problems with that approach:

1. It won't just restore Windows, it will wipe anything else you have put on it. I.e. it's worthless for those who use both Windows and another OS.
   
2. It won't work if the reason why you need to reinstall is that the disk is borken.
   

It is also very hard to upgrade the disk on a system like that, but, of course, the manufacturer and Microsoft would both prefer that you buy a new laptop...

Back to the original post, I think it is dead wrong, and that Windows is bundled makes it worse than a perception that it's free. People feel they have paid for Windows, and feel they should use what they have paid for. I am certain there are people who don't want to blow away their $300 OS for a free OS, just because they feel they have paid for it, and they don't want to appear as fools who pay for something they do not use.

Re:Very true....

I recently re-installed my laptop to give it to my parents. It came with XP Professional, but I couldn't find the installation disc (if it even came with one). So I just used the XP Pro image I happened to have lying around. This required a VLK of course, so the key on the sticker on the laptop doesn't work. Just used a keygen to get it to install.

So, that laptop would be classified as running a pirated copy of Windows, just because they still try to prevent you "stealing" their software by limiting access to the shiny discs (and because I was too lazy to download an OEM image so the key would work). Furthermore, I don't have to activate this version of Windows, so yet again: the pirated version is more convenient than the legit product.

Re:Very true....

Actually that doesn't always work. In fact, unless something has changed in the past couple of years, this -rarely- works. When I was doing this often, I found that the installed key would almost invariably fail to validate the OEM setup unless you had a copy of the XP OEM disc from that manufacturer. Same revision of XP, same everything except for the manufacturer. It got to the point that we had to make copies of the OEM discs for each manufacturer just to do re-installs.

Re:Very true....

No, no, no - you're misunderstanding what I'm saying entirely. Don't ever use the discs that come with the computer. Get your own copy of an OEM disc, whether borrowed or purchased like here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16832116049 [newegg.com]

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16832116059 [newegg.com]

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16832116056 [newegg.com]

I have one copy of each and they are most widely used discs as a person who fixes computers for people for a living. The sticker on any OEM computer will work with the appropriate disc, and that's all you need.

Re:Very true....

The posts in this thread remind me why I like Linux so much. Look at all the trouble to deal with anti-piracy stupidity. Sure, Linux users will go back and forth about editing arcane configuration files but this stuff is asinine.

Re:Very true....

True. With proprietary software you frequently get a lot of stress, even when using completely legit software, dealing with problems DELIBERATELY put there by the manufacturers. Like games that don't want to play because you've got some piece of software installed that *could* allow you to run the game without the CD. (notably daemon-tools prevents quite a few games from running, *unless* you run them trough daemon-tools, ironically.)

Re:Very true....

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!

Re:Very true....

many people just loose their OEM disk ... How should those people be handled?

Quite seriously for letting the things out - they could bite some kid or crap on my lawn. If they just let them loose and don't have them on a leash or behind a high enough fence they are a menace.

We must be tough on all forms of piracy

How should those people be handled? Is Piracy still piracy if it's the same version as what was there before?

Yes, it's absolutely piracy.

We need to be more tough on pirates and terrorists. In the music industry we use fines of $100,000 per 5MB of illegal pirated contraband. This should be increased to $500,000 per 5MB for Windows because it is such an important piece of software. Since Windows is about 1 GB in size that means we should be fining them about a gajillion dollars per theft. If you have multiple pirated copies then we must treat it as a commercial operation, and then clearly we are talking about *much* larger numbers.

Once the fine has been paid the pirates should then be sentenced to death by hanging. This is a good way to prevent re-offending.

I know that some of you think this is a little harsh but we must remember what the world was like when we were too gentle with pirates and terrorists. Do you want events like 9/11 to become a regular occurrence?

Re:Very true....

Everything has a cost.

Couldn't agree more.

Linux generally costs me a lot of time -- more time than it's worth to me.

Funny, I'd say the same about Windows.

When it comes to installing, Linux is much simpler and faster (and thus cheaper). When it comes to configuration, Linux is (again) easier and faster. Software installation? No contest (try comparing MS Office with OpenOffice packages.)

Then you have to factor in administration and update headaches (Linux is a one-stop-shop, updating in the background, whereas Windows update does the base OS, but then I have to update all of the other software manually.) Not to mention anti-virus and other associated headaches.

Even with a "$0" price tag, Windows costs *much* more than Linux.

Re:Wow!

> Ummm, that's not exactly an insight. Any story here about software in China mentions that point.

The point was that is isn't just China. And it is a good point, but one I have realized for years. It's why I don't make a big issue of the free beer aspect in discussions. Because Windows is free, almost nobody ever sees a line item on a ticket for a Windows license. It either comes preloaded or bootleg.

Which is the big point the linked article got wrong. Microsoft would never officially make Windows free for home users because it would hose the preload arrangments and they are THE key to maintaining the monopoly. The second problem with the piece is the assertion Microsoft can't acknoledge the benefits of piracy, they have in the case of the third world and China.

Linux must be better than Windows on the merits, disregarding the stocker price. The Thinkpad I'm typing this on came preloaded with XP Pro. It hasn't accumulated a day of runtime in the four years I have been using it. Guess that says how value I see in it.

I kept it just in case I needed to update firmware or call for tech support and they wanted to insist I show the problem exists in Windows. At some point I figured I had better boot over and let it update to SP2 so as to avoid being a menace to the Internet if someone ever used the Windows side. After which it now silently updates the firmware in the Cisco WiFi card at every boot and now I have to remember to reflash it back before shutting down anytime I let XP start. Big disincentive to NEVER boot that turd.

Pirates don't hurt anyone

it's the swords -

Windows isn't free

OEM licences are cheap, but if XP lasts for 5 or so years and in that time you upgrade your computer 3 times then you've bought OEM Windows 3 times.

Even if you buy a boxed version of Windows XP then you will still have to pay for OEM XP with each PC. This is the injustice in the way Microsoft bullies OEMs into not selling naked PCs.

Re:Windows isn't free

I'm not entirely convinced it is -just- Microsoft's "bullying" that keeps OEMs from selling naked PCs; they don't think consumers want naked PCs. Most computer users today are... well idiots who wouldn't know how to install an OS if their life depended on it. Beyond that, most people know Windows and want to continue using it.

Re:Windows isn't free

> I'm not entirely convinced it is -just- Microsoft's "bullying" that keeps OEMs from selling naked PCs;

Think ten seconds and you will realize just how wrong you are.

First admit that us geeks here on /. and other places aren't exacly legion compared to the hordes of mass consumer electronics buyers but we ain't exactly zero either. Now thought experiment time. If Microsoft were honoring their agreements NOT to enforce illegal per CPU licensing deals what would be the reason for EVERY manufacturer to have a policy where anytime a Linux crank called em up wanting to buy a machine without Windows to just say, "OK, done. Subtract $20 from the listed price. That is the difference between a stock machine with Windows and one without after we have to manually open the carton and remove the CD and blank the drive. Order 50 and we will talk about saving ya some more." Kinda amazing that instead, after over a decade of us asking, NOT ONE SINGLE MAJOR VENDOR WILL DO IT. Dell now offers preloaded Linux but it still isn't a naked machine sold for LESS THAN WINDOWS. Even Dell's N series machines usually end up costing the same or more than the same hardware loaded with Windows when you play the coupon, rebate and daily special games.

What each and every vendor refuses to do, against all economic theory, is offer what a small but non zero minority of customers have been yelling loudly for over a decade for, to be able to buy a naked PC that is in every way exactly like the same machine offered with Windows, sold for a lower price without a preloaded copy of Windows. Always smoke and mirrors and the naked or Linux preload ends up the same or more and you can't shake a sneaking suspicion you paid the Microsoft tax anyway and they just kept the media and sticker. There are enough of us that basic economic theory says ONE vendor would have satisfied the market unless Microsoft is still illegally distorting it.

Re:Windows isn't free

"What each and every vendor refuses to do, against all economic theory, is offer what a small but non zero minority of customers have been yelling loudly for over a decade for, to be able to buy a naked PC that is in every way exactly like the same machine offered with Windows, sold for a lower price without a preloaded copy of Windows. Always smoke and mirrors and the naked or Linux preload ends up the same or more and you can't shake a sneaking suspicion you paid the Microsoft tax anyway and they just kept the media and sticker. There are enough of us that basic economic theory says ONE vendor would have satisfied the market unless Microsoft is still illegally distorting it."

Lets pretend for a second that WalMart, Dell, and now soon Lenovo have all sold or announced the intention to sell computers with Linux pre-installed (and at lower prices than their Windows brethren). Yeah, they might not be that much cheaper, just a few hundred bucks (compared to the cost of the rest of the machine which can easily be over a grand), but thats about how much Windows costs.

If you really are a die hard computer geek, there is a good chance you won't even buy from a major vendor but just build your own machine. And many of the rest of them want a dual boot machine so they can play games that are only available on Windows. And despite what we say around here, Linux has never been big on the desktop, which is what these computers you are speaking of are sold for. It is primarily used on machines like servers (where you can easily buy it preloaded). Thus the minority of users who will buy a naked or Linux PC is very, very small indeed.

And the cost of selling machines without the standard OS is not non-zero. They have to pay to support them, install them (in the case of Linux preloaded machines), sell them, stock them, and then deal with all the cranky old ladies who didn't understand what they were buying and accidentally bought a computer without an OS. So actually economics states that it is not necessarily a profitable idea.

Re:Windows isn't free

I could be wrong, but I don't believe there's much of a demand for naked PCs. I used to sell computers and often times customers would ask me whether the computer came with any software, namely Windows (and sometimes MS Office), or not. From my experience, not only do customers want Windows to be pre-installed, but they expect it to be.

The same can even be said about a few customers who expected MS Office to be pre-installed too. "What? I'm buying a $500 computer and it doesn't even come with Office? How come?"

Re:Windows isn't free

I can relate to that. My girlfriend called me a couple of weeks ago and wanted me to install Windows on her daughter's computer. She had just gone out and bought the software. I said that I was 100% sure that she already had Windows on that computer. "No", she said, "Windows isn't on this computer and she needs it to type her resume." Turns out that the computer had Windows and what she had bought that day was Office. And this is a woman who is intelligent enough to date me!

Re:Windows isn't free

And this is a woman who is intelligent enough to date me!

What does that say about you?

Price model

The guys at M$ are pretty smart. There's a good argument that Windows is too expensive, and that if it was cheaper more people would buy it and that would both discourage piracy and boost the company's profits. But consider the article's point in that context: if Windows was cheaper, it would get rid of the piracy that is staving off Microsoft's REAL competition: freeware.

Maybe this is just tinfoil hat stuff, but could this all be part of Microsoft's strategy? Are they that smart?

Re:Price model

Maybe this is just tinfoil hat stuff, but could this all be part of Microsoft's strategy? Are they that smart? - no, they are really dumb. They are only making billions while they could be making MILLIONS!

Re:Price model

That's an old drug-dealer strategy - the first time is for free, then they come to you with money.

I want to meet one of those drug dealers. They give me the first one free, then they come to me with money after that? Where do I sign up?!

Re:Windows is free

I know you're trying to be funny, but here's my funny anecdote. I got a Vista laptop [acer.com] over the weekend. It was dog ass slow, so I installed Mandriva (I was planning to install it before I bought it). I took me a few hours to get the network card drivers working, but after that, I had a full 3D desktop with wireless capability. So, while it took some of my time to get my machine working under Linux, but I figure I've already saved that much time in how much quicker my machine operates then when Vista is running. And I don't even get a 3D Desktop in windows, because it thinks my computer isn't good enough, and only ships with home basic.

OSS is not free.

Not sure why there is this pervasive myth that OSS is free. First, it costs people time to develop and contribute to OSS projects. Not all OSS is successful; a lot expects that others will contribute to grow the usefulness of the software.

Then there is the configuration and maintenance cost. It costs people time to install and maintain a Linux OS loaded up with software. Support isn't always free for applications. A lot of OSS software I've seen pushes the "Here is the *tool* free, now pay us to train you, and/or make it work for you."

Call me flamebait or a troll. I just don't think piracy equates to free. A lot of people know that copying Windows (or software of choice) is theft. The problem is the perceived value of the software, and OSS has a similiar perception issue...

Re:OSS is not free.

Execpt that piracy isnt theft, and OSS is free to the USER, which is what the discussion is about here. Its not about development 'costs'.

The fact you can buy support doesnt mean you have too.