On Sunday 22 July 2001 01:27, you wrote:
Folks, I think Philip said "It's okay to use windows if you use a pirated copy. Just don't pay Microsoft for it." come come, people! Was he really serious? No one, repeat, NO one is forcing anybody to use Microsoft products. People use them because they, for various reasons, find no better alternative.
Not the whole story. Very many have to use it because of non disclosure of formats and API's. Eg. 1) One of my friends purchased a Saudi gov. export directory on CD. The files were in WMF format and could not be read by Office 97 on win95. My friend had spent a small fortune purchasing the three and was forced to purchase w98 and office2000. Eg. 2) (refer Krishnans mail.) I was the recepient of CIH in 98. The fat was destroyed. I had very very important data and had to recover that. The disk used fat32 FS. I searched M$ for the fat32 documentation and found none. I managed to get the info from a polish univ. site. M$ published the info in August 98- 3yrs after releasing the fat32 fs with Win-95. It is a typical bait and switch tactic used by M$
Microsoft are within their rights to charge anything they want for any part of their products (someone mentioned that you get the OS but not the API). If you do not like that but still buy them, then it is you who is the sucker, not them unethical.
Not at all. The vast majority of users do not understand computing systems and the clever seperation of the product from the operational details particularly in the case of software. In eg2 abv. I needed the info to recover my data, encapsulated by M$ thru a product I had paid for.
Microsoft is a company like any other. It is a commercial venture who has to look after the prosperity of its shareholders. They also have to protect themselves from the competition by devising schemes and strategies to beat them.
Beat the competition by beating the customer some strategy that. Only first they drug you sensless.
In this they are no different from any other company (take the example of the Cola wars). In this business environment, the stronger, smarter one survives. Very much like nature.
Takiing care of the environment that's what FSF is all about. M$ and others are not very relevant to the larger scheme of things and are indeed free to go their way except when they encroach on your rights both as a user and as hack.
Does a restaurant, who has a popular special dish, disclose its secret recipe?
They dont. Nor do they prevent you from cooking the same either. Would be fun to sign a EULA and NDA before eating and indemnify the restaurant in advance for a probable tummy upset.