[2Gkashmiri]

in india, piracy is not seen as bad unless its some bigshot movie star who calls it a "heinous crime" that a user enjoys their movies and they arent getting paid. anyways, i have never paid for a windows license. maybe back in 98 days but never after that. we use cracks and it used to be sold for a dollar or less. get an iso, copy iso, copy crack and thats it.

people here have a problem accepting foss because they see windows as free so what benefit is switching to ubuntu?

about media. until few years ago, you could only watch movies in theaters or on cable tv. shops would resell torrented movies for few cents a pop because that is at most what people were willing to pay. i am not going to buy an original DVD 6 months after launch for $ 30 if i get screener for $0.2 dollars next day of launch.

its not about "robbing" the company, often purchasing parity means $10 is a days manual labour wages. paying $99 for a windows license used to make no sense when they already paid not more than $200-300 for an entire setup or a laptop.

[magicloop]

In those days Microsoft had a "curious" business strategy. They wanted Windows to be the dominant standard whilst trying to avoid monopoly litigation. So they'd charge everyone a license fee knowing that standard businesses would pay up, and those that wouldn't or couldn't were allowed to crack the software and use it. That portion of the market, the "piracy" sector wasn't in their view part of their market share numbers (they would say they weren't a monopoly). But having this in place meant it was harder for competitors to sub-divide the market into other Operating Systems and Enterprise productivity software. So it would end up as either Open Source or Windows. This is why they didn't reduce their prices for purchasing power parity purposes (to make it equally affordable in each market). The rich countries could drive their profits, and everyone else had a "free" ride just to shut the door on a competitor.

Of course, the history of Microsoft and Anti-trust litigation is well documented. Things didn't entirely work out for them.

[hellbannedguy]

Every computer I bought had a windies license fee tacked on wether I used their operating system, or not.

To this day, I try not to give Microsoft any money.

I have never really cared for Gates, nor his nonprofit that gives less than 1 percent back to the country that allowed him to flourish.

[realityking]

> nor his nonprofit that gives less than 1 percent back to the country that allowed him to flourish.

Do I understand you correctly, that your objection to the Gates foundation is, that they don‘t spend on projects in the US?

[riversflow]

Im gonna go out on a limb and say that, yes, that is their objection. Does that surprise you, or do you find it objectionable? Why? Im legitimately curious.

[mullingitover]

The Gates Foundation has done a lot to save lives and reduce suffering in developing countries. It's a bit tone-deaf to knock him on that point, and also pretty myopic. The US does not exist in a vacuum, and having third world countries develop faster because they're not getting hammered by easily preventable diseases actually can benefit the US. The people who are alive today (or maybe their descendants) might be buying products and services from the US down the road.

[deadlyllama]

A lot, as long as it respects Western intellectual property "rights."

Like persuading Oxford University to NOT give away the rights to its COVID-19 vaccine: https://khn.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-vaccine...

[blindmute]

Why would you choose to save lives and reduce suffering in a far off land when you could save lives and reduce suffering for your own country? That is what I have never understood about foreign aid charities.

[CRConrad]

Is there any reason to think the money he made and is now giving away came mainly from the US? AFAICT there are a lot more users of Microsoft software outside the USA than within them. With that in mind: Yes, it seems rather ludicrous to demand that he use it for charity exclusively there.

Another reason being that the US is one of the richest countries in the world -- and therefore, logically, among the least in need of charity. (BTW, this shows the objection is ridiculous even if his fortune came mainly from the USA: If he had made his money from selling some luxury article, say Rolls-Royce cars or something, and then decided to spend the money so earned on charity -- should he have been expected to spend it only on helping the kind of people who buy Rolls-Royces?)

Both screamingly obvious reasons IMO, so I find it somewhat surprising that anyone needed to be curious about this.

[intricatedetail]

In the 90s and early 00s, the pirated software was like weed. If police didn't find anything on you, they'll get your computer and charge you with piracy. That time everyone had something, Windows or Norton Commander etc. I read about people having counted each file as a separate charge, to make them look like big fish. There were instances they counted expired trials too...

[CorrectHorseBat]

In those days?

Right now it's even easier. You don't even have to crack it, just select "I'll do this later" when you have to fill in your license code.

[gambiting]

€3 keys off eBay work perfectly fine and are legal since reselling OEM software has been explicitly ruled to be legal several times in EU courts now.

[bobiny]

I've read that these cheap OEM licenses could be cancelled after some time. Dunno if true or not. Could you give a link for EU courts' rulings?

[mrweasel]

I believe it’s this ruling in a case involving Oracle: https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=12...

The ruling was appeal and a 2016 ruling in a higher court just confirmed that you can in fact resell software licenses.

[bobiny]

But isn't it a different license like consumer vs business? I mean when OEMs are used for pre-built PCs or when it's activated by end user.

[numpad0]

I know of a case where payment got cancelled: eBay found the seller fraudulent and refunded either out of pocket or from insurance, probably the latter.

That said, sometimes the licenses can indeed get cancelled. I’ve seen a really sketchy looking photocopied label that a guy “got” that didn’t work. Depends on the channel perhaps.

[userbinator]

It's interesting how Windows went from "worth pirating" to "don't want even if the upgrade is free" for me --- the user- hostile attitude MS has started to adopt has been a huge turn-off.

[blooalien]

> "people here have a problem accepting foss because they see windows as free so what benefit is switching to ubuntu?"

Because even if they gave you Windows free of cost, Windows has never been free as in freedom, and probably never will be. That's the thing people seem unable to wrap their brains around about FOSS is that it's about freedom, not cost. The fact that it's also cost-free is just added bonus that nobody in their right mind should complain about.

[fao_]

How many times have you altered Firefox, though? Or Chromium? Or GIMP? Or any other large software project?

Free as in freedom doesn't mean shit when codebases are so large as to be inscrutable and induplicable.

[blooalien]

While I myself have only modified smaller codebases, modified forks of Firefox, Chromium, and GIMP (among many others) do in fact exist. Some of those forks have even gone on to become quite popular (although none yet as popular as their parent codebases).

[userbinator]

Meanwhile, people have been patching and modding Windows despite the lack of source code.

[i0nutzb]

LPT: go to ebay, search for windows license. You can get one for 3-4$ or so. You can even find dedicated sites that sells cheap licenses of Windows or Office.