Microsoft and linux in China

[Christopher Browne]

On 7/11/07, Paul King <sciguy-Ja3L+HSX0kI at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/07/10/microsoft_china/index.html
>
> I like the part where Gates is forced to say that "Piracy isn't so bad after
> all". If this is an actual quote, this has got to make Gates the lowest life
> form besides the amoeba. He stands for no higher principle than the Dollar
> Almighty.

What seems new about this?

When he went to college, it wasn't to study computing, it was to study law.

The grand successes at Microsoft have never been technological ones -
they have all been legal successes.  I'm not aware of a single
technology that Microsoft initiated that has been of more importance
than "Microsoft Bob" (which *was* a success, from the point of view
that it helped Bill find a wife, which is certainly more a legal
matter than a technical one...).

Their really successful products have largely been ones they bought
from someone else.

> Or perhaps, being the richest man in the world, maybe he thinks he can have it
> both ways (piracy OK in China; not OK elsewhere). That would not be a first for
> powerful public figures.

No, the point has been visible for decades.

He'd rather that people pirate Word, and maybe buy some manuals, now,
than that they use competitors' systems.  If they get hooked on using
his stuff, then they may *eventually* pay him something for it.

And if they're NOT using someone else's stuff, they're not paying
someone else,  they're not looking for support for that "something
else" and they're not, in any fashion, dependent on a non-Microsoft
product.

If you're "pirating" a Microsoft product, you *ARE* dependent on
Microsoft, even if that's not in all the ways that can make Microsoft
money.  By using Microsoft software, you're giving Microsoft some
power, namely you have entrusted your computer hardware and whatever
functionality you are using to their software.  Whether they were paid
for it does not change this.
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