[tlug] It's a crazy world out there (Windows Is Free related stuff)

[Dave M G <dave@example.com>]

TLUG,

At this point I'm getting swamped with email. And, yes, I don't deny for 
a second that I am dancing around with self-satisfaction, so please 
forgive me if I'm harping about my article a lot right now.

What I hadn't really anticipated, and is turning out to be the best part 
of this, is hearing from people all over the world from all sorts of 
walks of life, who have different angles that I never thought about 
before. As I try and sift through those responses, I thought I'd share 
some of them with you:

From a guy in Venezuela:
"In my country piracy is the commonplace, I mean there are even street 
markets where you can find any software, music or movie you want, at 
plain sight, then again according to my perception making copies from 
friends is a much common practice, I just wanted to tell you that it's 
nice to know that this isn't something that happens only here on what 
some people call "the third world" (I don't share that vision, but 
that's just politics). I refused to believe that human beings from 
another countries had some kind of greater morality and self induced 
respect for Microsoft copyrights and never installed a pirated copy of 
Windows."

From a guy who said software piracy was "The Christian thing to do":
"As a comment to your article, I've heard the concept of "helping your 
neighbor" often brought up as a reason for piracy. ... In fact, EULAs 
and copyright law in general (as applied today) usually is cross with 
the moral obligation (derived from Christian teachings for most) to help 
others who are without... The story comes to mind of Jesus sharing 1 
fish & 1 piece of bread with 100s of followers What would that have done 
to the local fishermen and chef?... In my experience, the most 
god-fearing PC users do the most file trading."

Actually, I could go on and on about the Christian guy's comments, 
because they are just from an entirely different planet. But I'll just 
add my absolute favorite gem:
"It seems strange though that such an anti-religious group (FOSS 
programmers) could build the GPL, which explicitly allows such a moral 
use. I think this is why it hasn't been recognized much... because the 2 
groups are so terribly disconnected from each other and yet on the same 
side. They both prefer the spread of resources between people to expand 
so that anybody can get the same benefit anyone else has."

The military need to get pirated copies:
"I am in the Army Reserve, as a Warrant Officer (recent promotion). My 
job is '254a', or "Information Systems Operator-Analyst,"... Our unit 
deployed to Iraq in 2004, with the mission to take over FOB (forward 
operating base) ... When we got on ground... had to basically plan an 
entire LAN/WAN for the two square mile base, install it, and get it 
running, in 30 days. ... The first problem we ran into was baselining 
all the laptops for the base; over 200 of them. Technically, the Army 
has a contract with Microsoft... but out in the desert, we were 
hard-pressed to find copies of all the software we needed. Sure, we 
could order it, but it can take months to arrive.
In the end, to get the network up and running, we used our satellite 
link to download some pirated copies of Windows XP, 2kPro, 2000 Advanced 
Server, 2003 Enterprise Server, and the entire Office 2003 suite. We 
burned them to CD-R's, and started installing."

A lot of people have written in with a lot of supporting evidence 
showing that Microsoft does, indeed, actively and knowingly leverage the 
value of pirated software in order to establish and maintain dominance. 
One guy even provided a quote directly from Bill Gates to the effect. 
Still more have written with testimonials about their own use of pirated 
software and/or it's prevalence in their various environments.

While there have been quite a few who agree with the premise but 
disagree with certain points, very few, like literally 3 or 4, have 
disagreed entirely. Unfortunately, I have to say that the cases made by 
these people are very weak:
"I’m that guy you seem to think doesn’t exist … I have a license for 
EVERY SINGLE COPY of Windows that I am running."
"Despite your coincidence of hearing the dancers, and your own 
experience, I just don't see the same things. I regularly hear people 
going without Windows fixes because they don't want to shell out $200, 
or actually paying the retail price to get it, though they are generally 
intelligent and somewhat computer-using savvy."

One guy thought my whole argument fell apart... because of my Hyundai 
analogy:
"I have owned three of them and my son recently bought a fourth.  The 
first was purchased the first month that they were available for sale in 
the United States.  Unlike your description, it was of much higher 
quality than its U. S. competition and of near equal or equal quality to 
the Honda which I have also owned."

A blog post about the article:
http://animus.mechanus.org/?p=55

One TLUG related comment:
"(I) had the chance to drop in on a TLUG meeting once, in Aoyama I 
think, surprised to find it was done almost entirely in English" 
(Aoyama? Maybe he's thinking of TPCUG?)

And just to go out on a head swelling good note...
"This article is briliant. I just finished reading it now early in the 
morning, and it echoes all the nebulous thoughts that I have had on this 
topic, but expressed it in a succinct and logically concise fashion. "
"This was the best article I've read in a long time. You should probably 
brace for impact from slashdot."
"I just read your article "Windows is Free" and just wanted to say that 
you my friend, are a genius. And you just gained a new reader."

--
Dave M G
http://www.tlug.jp/wiki/User:Dave_M_G