David McPaul wrote:
I mostly find windows too political. When there is code written to check that I am using my computer only in microsoft approved ways then you know they no longer have the consumers interest in mind.
Within hours of the release of XP, someone in China had hacked it and release an unlicensed version. That code is an attempt to verify that consumers have purchased a legitimate copy. Microsoft is a business, and they want to make money.
Google is also a business. That is why they signed a deal with the Chinese government to turn over information on users of their services in China, information that could potentially lead to the arrest of those people. That worries me a lot more than Microsoft's anti-piracy code. "Don't be evil." Unless, of course, being evil turns profit.
Don't get me wrong. I like what Google does for free software; I even applied to be part of the Summer of Code. But the deal with China was a hypocritical action, and they did it to make money. (It wasn't just Google, either. All the big search engines did it.)
I liked BeOS. I plan on switching to Haiku when R1 is finally released. But Microsoft has already released three (I think) new versions of their operating system since Be went under, and at least one more will be out before R1. Because people pay Microsoft for their products, and thus Microsoft can pay programmers, whole teams of programmers to work on them full-time.
Free software is nice, but for the most part you get what you pay for. (There are some wonderful exceptions.) Microsoft provides products and services that people want. That is why people pay for them. That is why other people pirate them.
