How Pirated Software Impacts Free Software 530
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?'"
Windows isn't free (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Price model (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe this is just tinfoil hat stuff, but could this all be part of Microsoft's strategy? Are they that smart?
OSS is not free. (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
windows vs linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OSS is not free. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact you can buy support doesnt mean you have too.
Re:Very true.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Windows isn't free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Very true.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't something "Terminal" often a big bad virus/malware infection? For many people it is and they do not know how to back up their data. USB disk or not.... I have heard of people that lost the first three years of their childs digital photos due to a "computer failure". I bet it was a big bad virus infection and they just replaced the machine without even trying to save it.
Look, I've found a P-IV 1.9GHz/512Meg RAM in the dumpster a while ago.... Completely functional.... W2k fully infected.... A clean Linux install and I was working with it again. Sure, it isn't the fastest machine, but it's nothing to spit at either. The W2k license sticker was still on it too....
But yes, I agree that it was bad advice from the tech to avoid mentioning backups. However, people have gotten used to losing data due to "Terminal Computer failure" or when buying a new system. It's just how computers are supposed to work... at least that's what they think.
Re:Windows isn't free (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Very true.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I do like the robust nature of Linux, the ability to have multiple logins, and the endless possibility for customization, but those aren't things I need as much as the virtually endless array of high quality Windows software, vendor support for hardware, and the relatively limited Windows versioning that makes troubleshooting much, much easier. There's never a need for me to try to have multiple versions of compilers and libraries installed side-by-side; if I'm having a problem with a Windows application, it's never a peculiarity of a particular distribution (or version of a distribution) to blame*, and obviously there's never a need to reboot into Windows to use some application that doesn't have a Linux equivalent, or to play a game. I'm not wealthy, but I definitely have very limited time, which makes the decision easy for me.
* Obviously there are issues with applications and major version changes in Windows, but it's typically much less of a problem, and an infrequent occurrence (albeit thanks in no small part to the unintended consequence of a glacial release schedule).
Home Uses Are Too Small (Score:2, Insightful)
The largest customers of Microsoft Windows are businesses, not home users. Businesses generally buy new OEM hardware and get the OS and Office with the machine. There are cases where they might get some older hardware together and run a not-so-ligit OS on it, but I think that's the exception. Most PHBs consider the warranty coverage of new hardware to far outweigh the advantage of trying to keep current hardware around.
If you want Linux on the desktop, then businesses are where it has to start, and home users will follow.
office is a better example (Score:5, Insightful)
You can buy a $350 Dell and then add $150-$400 for Office. I'm not sure if non-students qualify for the $150.
Yet the fact that so many people "require" you to use Office makes me think they assume it is free, which can only mean that everyone pirates it. For example, I was interviewing for jobs once and submitted my resume as a PDF generated with OO. They kicked it back and said they needed it in Word format so they could index it properly. 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. (Now cue the "you shouldn't work at such a stupid place anyway" comments- you're probably right!)
Also I've heard some schools require kids to do work in MS Office at home. Are they really telling parents they have to go out and spend $150-$400? Or do they THINK they're telling parents and kids to use something they already have? If they already have it, how many of those are pirated copies.
So yeah, if it suddenly became impossible to pirate office, I really think that at a minimum, schools would change their tune.
I'm not a MS basher, and try to stay pretty objective. But the fact that we, as a society, have convinced ourselves that we HAVE to use Office and make our own policies enforcing it's use... well, it drives me nuts! It is such a cliche by now, but still so valid- most people don't use 10% of the features in Word or Excel.
Not "Free as in beer" (Score:1, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_as_in_beer [wikipedia.org]
Re:Flip side (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This may be a "grey" area ... (Score:5, Insightful)
False pretenses... (Score:2, Insightful)
In regards to home users, not really much do discuss; most believe that MS Office is part of the OS and don't know where apps start and the OS ends, this will be a tough group to educate but the vast majority aren't pirates and just live with what their OEM puts on their PC. That article was nothing more than a perfect example of a classic Dvorak troll.
Re:Windows isn't free (Score:4, Insightful)
Think ten seconds and you will realize just how wrong you are.
First admit that us geeks here on
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:Not true (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the unpleasant truth that nobody wants to admit. Linux is free and yet every day, millions of people all over the world use pirated Windows instead. On a level playing field (Linux = free, Pirated Windows = free), people overwhelmingly choose Windows. If Linux was anywhere near as good as Windows it would be far more popular than it is today.
You can claim that Linux is better. That's your opinion. Just like people used to swear that Beta was superior to VHS.
The author of the article repeatedly claims that everyone should switch to Linux because it's "almost as good as Windows". Unfortunately it's not. When the best applications aren't available on Linux, that's not "almost as good". When you have to carefully pick and choose your hardware because only a few have Linux drivers, that's not "almost as good".
I've tried to like Linux. I really have. Redhat, Suse, Ubuntu. But it is vastly inferior in all the ways that matter. And the actions of millions of people all over the world shows that they feel the same.
Re:This may be a "grey" area ... (Score:3, Insightful)
REMOVING Windows is NOT free. (Score:3, Insightful)
The cost includes:
- the perceived risk of loss of the machine (and the money invested in it) if the install of the alternative OS goes wrong so badly that it can't be backed out and the machine recovered to its previous working configuration.
- the cost of porting his data and working procedures to a new environment and learning to be efficient in this new environment.
The cost is even higher if the machine isn't fresh, but he's been working on it for a while. Now he's risking his current working environment and the associated data.
(And yes I know about backups and having to reinstall Windows from time to time. So what? That's also fraught with risks of loss. The cost of having to recover from backups is something he knows in his guts from past experience. So now he should volunteer to incur this cost when he doesn't NEED to, in order to switch to an unfamiliar environment and incur the porting cost as well? You have to be perceived as a LOT better to get him over that hump.)
The way to break this cycle is what Dell is doing now: Provide new machines with Linux preinstalled for less than the same machine with Windows preinstalled. Then he has a known-good-system with support and only has to incur the porting cost, much of which he'd incur in migrating to a new machine. (And how good it is that this is happening at the same time as the rollout of Vista, increasing the porting cost for sticking with Windows by adding the migration to a new version.)
Re:windows vs linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I hear this all the time: "I can't switch to Linux, I don't even understand Windows!"
hardware and software are cheap compared to time (Score:5, Insightful)
For many people, both computer hardware and computer software are cheap compared to the time they spend using their computer, dealing with computer hassles, etc. For someone who's a professional graphic designer, for example, the price of a nice mac with a big screen, and copies of all the Adobe stuff, are just tax-deductible fixed costs of running their business. For people like this, the most important consideration is maximizing their productivity. If they're already used to Photoshop, then switching to GIMP isn't likely to make them any more productive. Ditto for switching from Windows to Linux.
Since it's all about time for professional users, any time spent screwing around and getting the dang thing to work is a disaster. I'm not sure whether Linux is significantly less usable than Windows or MacOS X at this point; the question probably can't be answered because it involves a lot of value judgments, lifestyle choices, and personal issues like technical and educational background. But what I'm absolutely certain of is that any computer is a lot of hassle to set up and maintain. Slashdot users may consider that hassle to be a kind of fun, but that's not the case for most people. So let's say, for the sake of argument, that Windows, MacOS X, and Linux are all about equally full of hassles. Well, the person who is already running Windows has already worked out the hassles with Windows. It's going to take them a huge amount of time to work out all the new and different hassles of a different OS.
Now that was all about professional users. The article's points about cracked software are mostly relevant to students and casual users. To a student, it may really make financial sense to spend a weekend obtaining and installing a cracked version of Photoshop, because he simply doesn't have the money to buy a legal copy. The thing is, it's very common in the retail world for businesses to offer different pricing to people who have different personal priorities about money versus hassle. Airlines sell first-class tickets, but they also sell economy tickets. Supermarkets give their best prices to people who have membership cards and who are willing to clip coupons from the Sunday paper. The existence of cracked copies of Windows is another example of the same thing. Microsoft is very happy that a broke college student pirates Windows, because the student doesn't have the money to pay for a legal copy, and if he wasn't using bootlegged Windows, he might get in the habit of using some other OS.
Re cracked software, I think there's another phenomenon that the author of TFA isn't cluing in on. Commercial software tends to exploit users. For example, I've bought Mac software (Mathematica) that wouldn't work on my new Mac because it had a later version of MacOS; their response was that I needed to buy a new version of the software to work on the new OS. In the same era, I bought some Mac music software with a copy protection scheme that involved inserting a special floppy every time you wanted to run it; I bought a new mac, which didn't have a floppy drive, and the software company told me I needed to buy an external floppy drive in order to keep running the software. A very common experience is that you buy software, find out that certain functionality is broken, and are forced to pay for an upgrade in hopes that it will fix the bug. The whole computer hardware and software industry runs on principle of the upgrade treadmill: software companies arm-twist you into buying new versions of software, which then won't run or don't perform acceptably on your hardware, so you have to buy new hardware. One response to this (my response) was to switch to Linux. But a completely different, and not so unreasonable, response is to fight back by pirating your software.
Re:Very true.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Not true (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Very true.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Very true.... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's at least two problems with that approach:
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:This may be a "grey" area ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is this at 5, funny? This is worthy of 5, Insightful if anything is. Vendor specific apps are B.S.
Re:Very true.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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:This may be a "grey" area ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Flip side (Score:2, Insightful)
I work in a high school in the IT department, and many of the (non-IT) staff and teachers (as well as many other people that I know elsewhere) know enough to check their e-mail, write a Word document, and print it. If I'm lucky, they ^might^ have a vague idea what the names of those programs are.
Weather it's easier in the long run or not, if they hear about an alternative (be it Mac or Linux or something else), they'll reject it immediately since they barely know enough to survive on their current setup and don't want to learn a different setup.
Granted, not everyone is this timid around computers, but it does describe a large portion of users, and not only the older users.
Yeah, but then people don't upgrade (Score:3, Insightful)
I have upgraded my version of MacOS a twice, but I am a top end user. The Macs my parents own haven't been upgraded
in quite some time. In the time that I owned Windows PCs, I didn't upgraded th eOS, I got a new PC. This seems the
way it has been with most of the average users that I know. They use the same version of OS that was installed and use
it for a few years until the whole machine needs to be replace and they replace the whole lot.
In that sense, the OS is always free because they never made a line item payment for the OS on purchase, and never
upgraded the machine they originally purchased. People don't choose Linux because it requires them to do something
other than plug the box in. Unless they special order something, but your local big box generally offers PCs with Windows.
Re:False pretenses... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've spent most of the last 4 1/2 years in the 3rd world and I may have seen a legally purchased copy of Microsoft Windows once, but I'm not sure. Many of the posters here are confirming that the same kind of copying goes on in the developed world too. Philippine internet cafe folks have to be able to run games because their strongest market is children playing games.
Re:Windows isn't free (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
Vastly Inferior (Score:2, Insightful)
Why the OS should be part of the hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
As we go to no moving parts the OS is going to disappear into the hardware like firmware, it will come on a chip on the mobo, and it will finally be where users want it instead of how Bill Gates and Richard Stallman think it should be done. Ubuntu should not come on a DVD, it should come on a PC. When the PC is one chip what will be the rationale for selling it with some assembly required?
Re:Very true....Missing install CDs (Score:3, Insightful)
For a while I ran a pirated version of EZ CD Creator. I freely admit it. How was it justified? I have an older HP computer that did come with a wonderful recovery CD. My copy of the CD burning software became corrupted and would no longer launch. No problem. Uninstall the corrupt one and reinstall from original CD.
The uninstall went fine without a hitch. The OEM restore CD was a problem. The entire disk was just a Norton Ghost image. There was no way to reinstall my legal copy of the CD burning software without completely dumping my existing configuration, files, data, and later installed software.
To legally reinstall my software comes with the penalty of wiping my hard drive! This was unacceptable, so a replacement was borrowed from a friend. I would gladly tell the software vendors that I would stay legal if they provided installation disks that work without hosing the installation for the products provided with the hardware.
This is one of the issues that got me to seriously consider Linux. Software that works, is legal, and can be reinstalled without problems.
I am no longer running the pirated software so at the moment I am safe from a BSA raid. The older machine came with Windows 98 SE. It came to the point of the annual reformat/reinstall cycle and things were back to normal except now it's dual boot with Ubuntu. I still use Windows with the serial port to use my GPS software and National Geographic "Back Roads Explorer" topographic map software. For the occasional gig, I use Freestyler. Qlight is getting better, but not yet as functional.
Now that MS Office 97 is getting obsolete, the real cost in upgrading was a prime reason to dual boot the machine. Windows 98 didn't come with MS Office. Ubuntu does come with Open Office. I couldn't justify the cost of Photoshop. I used Arcsoft software that came bundled with my camrera on Windows 98. I now use The Gimp. Instead of pirating a copy of a CD burning software when my Windows 98 copy goes south, I use Ubuntu. A Right click on an iso in the OS gives me the option to burn to CD. Nice. No 3rd party software needed at all. Instead of Voyetra for recording audio, I use Audacity.
When you add up all the costs with a Windows install and typical applications, Ubuntu was an easy switch. Of course there is still a dual boot partition for the occasional GPS map load and gig. The rest of my machines are not dual boot.
Re:Very true.... (Score:2, Insightful)
dunno, but I personally installed a "pirated" version of Win2K along with ArchLinux on my main desktop, figuring that if I paid for the damn thing with my laptop, I'm damn well entitled to use it *somewhere*. Ohh yeah, and all my other systems, said laptop including, run either Linux or FreeBSD.
and yeah, posted under my username and not AC, Microsoft is as free to sue me over my OEM license transfer as I am over giving them one hell of a bad PR if they do. And they're free to sue me over their patents on Linux while they're at it, just more fodder for my anti-PR cannon.
Re:Very true.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure everything has a cost (Score:3, Insightful)
I think piracy hurts Linux in developing and home user markets because when one uses pirated software, one is not required to make the decision on whether to spend money on the software or not. Businesses hav greater liability and hence this is less of a factor.
All else being equal, people wills stick with what they know because that always costs less time.
Because I know Linux really well, I generally find that Windows costs me an inordinate amount of time and the opportunity cost is prohibitive (I can do a lot of things on Linux that I can't even dream about doing on Windows without a much larger budget than I have). So I am not going to dismiss the idea that, for Windows power user, Linux adoption takes a lot of time. The systems are different and both have learning curves attached.
This being said, I think that Linux for *average* Windows users has been ready on the business end for quite some time (since at least 2000) and for home use are getting close. There are many applications which still pose obstacles in consumer space, but these will make it soon enough.
In fact, in the business sector, Linux is a no-brainer choice. I am starting to help customers move from Microsoft Access to Once:Radix (an open source web-based program similar to Access but with a real RDBMS behind it). And many of my customers are expressing a desire to get rid of WIndows desktop systems in their places of buisness.
Best Wishes.
Chris Travers
Re:Very true.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Intent does play a part here. Don't try to skirt responsibility and don't cheat the system. In my case the previous tech's name was given out to the BSA and presumably MS is going after him/her civilly. He was the criminal here.
Hope this adds some insight to the topic here. Not a clear answer, but something to ponder.
Re:This may be a "grey" area ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Use VLC [vlc.org] or mplayer [mplayerhq.hu] if you want to play DVDs on Windows without the need of those annoying codecs ;-).
Research for the Linux operating system benefits Windows too :)
Re:Very true.... (Score:3, Insightful)