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Subject: Re: [H-GEN] The Gates Retirement Fund
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Hmm.

Your story of software theft? I doubt the media would look on that kind of 
activity any more favourably than local law enforcement agencies or 
Microsoft themselves.

I haven't commented so far on this thread, because I am a software villan. 
I have paid money to Microsoft because I have used Microsoft products and 
at times have found them enitrely indispensible. It is both a moral and a 
legal choice to pay for the software I use, or at least to use a license 
that someone else has paid for in the past is not currently using.

I believe this thread is about something more than avoiding payment to the 
evil one for software that you find indispensible. It's your obligation to 
pay for such software. The thread is about finding ways to replace tainted 
software with clean software, which is a much harder thing to do than to 
steal the tainted software.

I can only speak as a hypocrite on this subject. I use Microsoft products 
in the office, mainly because it is the corporate standard and I can't 
avoid it. Corporate policy dictates that we use Lotus notes on windows 
platforms. Corporate policy dictates that we submit our timesheets in 
excel format. It's a big corporation, and these policy decisions have been 
made by people with a much better strategic view and plan than I could 
come up with so I'm not in a position to protest.

In the home I have a wife who is studying and Microsoft Office 
applications are an exremely imporant part of the course she is involved 
in. I use licenses donated by people who have moved onto newer versions of 
the Microsoft products in question, but the money has still been sent to 
Microsoft by someone. When this software is required on my machine and 
fulfils everything we need to do with the machine, it's not even worth 
having a home UNIX installation.

All my software development occurs via my work laptop, which runs 
exclusively on free software. Business policies come into play here too, 
requiring that I use various Sun compilers and other proprietary 
development tools. Most of the work done by my laptop is to act as a 
glorified Xterm, which is a disappointing achievement on my part in terms 
of free software implementation.

Views are changing in the business, of course. Linux servers are popping 
up for various purposes that linux has proven it's self in, but our system 
administrator wants packaged solutions rather than tools that can build 
solutions to problems that have already been solved by other vendors. He 
wants to be able to put a RedHat cd into the drive and build a machine in 
less than half a day to do whatever he requires. He wants RAID and 
journalling filesystems, and due to the fact that many of the technoligies 
he wants are new to linux the out-of-the box installations don't always 
provide them.

My boss has been looking very seriously at alternatives for the Microsoft 
Office suites installed on every windows machine in the office. Each suite 
is not in use most of the time, but the license arrangements are per-user 
not per-machine so he has few recourses to reduce the cost within the 
Microsoft framework. Because of corporate decisions on file formats it's 
very difficult to break this mould. Until another set of formats is 
adopted as the coporate standard (which would also impact heavily on our 
customs who require access to many of our documents) it's really a sign of 
lunacy to attempt to use anything but the microsoft products. It's not 
worth the secretarial time that would be spent reformatting each document 
to put into the final Microsoft-based format.

On a corporate scale it's a very difficult thing to break the mould. This 
has a strong affect on business within the corporation, and due to the 
wide use of Microsoft applications it applies heavily to education and 
thus to individuals even outside this structure. Without a clear 
alternative to what really is a feature-rich Microsoft business product, 
the entire industry will continue to be a difficult nut to crack. Free 
alternatives will only survive in niches not under the influcence of this 
global phenomenon.


                                                                     And 
if 
they want to prosecute and take away my tv and computer (because that's 
all 
i own that's worth more than $20) then I"m sure one of the current affairs 

shows would love to hear my story ;-)



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