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?'"

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Slashdotted already

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have a mirror of the original article?

Linux will never win the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is now safe to say.

When I started my career, Windows 3.1 was a joke compared to our HP Open view and Solaris workstations. They had cool GUIs, and robust Unix backends, and superior remote management and group management capabilities.

Now Windows has all these things and not much has changed in the Linux world. Other than it has replaced all those proprietary *nixes (good riddance). Windows still owns the app space and game space and they finally even fixed their joke of a webserver with IIS6+. They have remote management and group management and even robust shells and configuration by text files.

Linux will probably never go away in the server room and running backends for web apps and such, but I think the desktop war is over. Maybe Mac has a chance, but they don't have the games.

Clearly, Vista is a bust until they can give us a compelling reason to dump our nice 2003 servers and okay XP boxes, but they will optimize and debug, and we will wait. We may not pay, but we will wait for what MS says is the next desktop.

Re:Very true....

[Verteiron]

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....

[ShaggyIan]

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....

[hawkbug]

I do this all the freaking time - just get an OEM copy of XP Home or Pro, and then reinstall with the key on the sticker on the side of machine. I do it once a week probably for people, it works every time. It doesn't matter if it's a Dell, HP, or whatever. It WILL work if you do it right with the right version of windows. As far as activation goes, sometimes you have to call in and get the stupid rep in India or whatever to read back a very long number to reactivate the machine, but it will install and you can reactivate it. You should NEVER have to pay for another copy of windows if your hard drive crashes, period.

Re:Wow!

[morgan_greywolf]

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.

And the problem is -- it is better. Look at modern desktop distros like Ubuntu. Nowadays they support a lot of hardware out of the box without having to do the work of loading a single driver. Everything is clean and well-integrated. Most applications that people need are installed right out of the box. It doesn't suffer from the maladies of spyware, adware, or viruses/worms/trojans or drive-by downloads.

Re:Very true....

[hawkbug]

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:office is a better example

[GreyPoopon]

I know OO saves in Word format, but I don't trust it for someone as important as a resume. Without a test machine with Office, it is hard to know what formatting/conversion defects might appear that would make me look like a dufus to the prospective employer.

OK, if you're using a Windows machine, there is an easy solution. If it's a Linux box, you might be able to get the solution to work under WINE. All you need is Word Viewer 2003. This will allow you to create a Word format document with OO.org and view it as Microsoft Office users would see it.

Re:Very true....

[Propaganda13]

I went to reinstall Windows XP Home on a Compaq computer with a lost disk. It had the sticker, but they had lost the disk. I used a generic OEM disk to reinstall instead. The automatic activation failed. Checked my number and I reinstalled thinking something was corrupted. The automatic activation failed again. I called Microsoft to activate. They said it wouldn't validate and they wouldn't help me since it was OEM and to call my manufacturer.

Needless to say, I played with it. YMMV
1. clicked on the phone call option
2. clicked on the change product key
3. re-entered product key
4. tried the internet activation again and it worked

Re:Not "Free as in beer"

[Constantine XVI]

Yes, they are.
Red Hat: while their binaries are not free, the source is, and there are people dedicated to converting the source back into binaries to hand out freely (CentOS).
SuSE: openSUSE is free, and SLED is more or less a freeze of openSUSE. In addition, SLED can be had for free (beer), but you can't update from the SLED repositories (openSUSE's repos works just fine though)

Those wanting to help the world...

[Spy der Mann]

... to get rid of the Microsoft monopoly, and happen to be proficient at C programming:
you could cooperate with the ReactOS [reactos.org] project (a windows compatible OS) and lend them a hand or two.

I'd love to help them, but I have little spare time and I'm not very good with C - just C++.

Oblig. P-A Reference

[bubbl07]

I commented on the physics of the most recent Die Hard having problems detracting from my enjoyment of the movie

The ass-backwardsness of Die Hard may also be used to add to your enjoyment [penny-arcade.com].

Re:Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

IF you describe better as having more drivers and games and major apps then yes...windows is better. If you mean stable and secure you're off your rocker.

I've got Macs, linux and windows boxes....and a few Amigas :)

By far the most fun to use is the linux boxes. Never a problem. The Macs have few problems. My windows box isn't really bad...it's just not as good as the macs or the lintel machines. The Amigas? They're out of date but it's nice to remember when computers had souls.

What's the sociology of stupid vendor software?

[Futurepower(R)]

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

[CheShACat]

Media player is perfectly capable of playing DVDs Erm. No it isn't, not out of the box on an unmodified Windows XP install.

Wrong.

[qweqwe321]

"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."

The trouble is that that theory is wrong. The OEMs actually make money by installing Windows, because the cost of Windows is far exceeded by the money software manufacturers pay them to install craplets.

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

[Poppler]

Define 'clean install'.

When you install it yourself from a retail or volume license disc, something you've apparently never done.

Media player is perfectly capable of playing DVDs

Only if you have the proper codec, which you probably got from your OEM. Otherwise, no, it can't [microsoft.com].

And PLEASE don't start to tell me how capable Linux is out of the box with NO additional items

I didn't say anything about Linux. We're talking about Windows XP.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Media Player, which is quite capable of playing DVDs.

Not necessarily. [microsoft.com]

Posting AC because this shit is getting redundant.