INDUCE and Windows
p2pnet.net News:- In a leader, ZDNet UK has come out with a short, sharp reason to kill INDUCE before it has a chance to wreak havoc.
Pointing to a "paradoxical" Gartner observation that in the US and Western Europe, 40% of PCs sold with Linux installed are, "subsequently hosed clean and receive an illicit copy of Windows" and that in emerging markets, "that fate awaits a full eighty percent of Linux pre-installs," it asks if Windows piracy is boosting Linux numbers, or is Linux encouraging Windows piracy.
In another IDG News Service report, the "high price of Windows may be driving vendors in countries like China and Russia to ship Linux on as many as 40 percent of their PCs, but many of these systems will not ultimately run the free operating system, Gartner says.
"In fact, this high percentage of Linux sales is being driven by the availability of cheap pirated copies of Windows rather than a desire to run Linux. The widespread availability of pirated versions of Windows at a fraction of the cost of a legal copy stimulates the growth of Linux on PCs in emerging markets, ‘ wrote Gartner Analyst Annette Jump in the report, entitled ‘Linux Has a Fight on Its Hands in Emerging PC Markets’."
Now, "if the Induce Act currently being debated by the US government manages to pass, anything that looks like encouragement to piracy could be held to be as illegal as the piracy itself," says ZDNet. "This raises the interesting idea that sales of any PC pre-installed with an OS that is cheaper and less popular than the market leader will be banned by law. It’s then hard to avoid banning the sale of motherboards and other components or the second-hand sales of computers themselves – all acts that could encourage people to avoid paying the Windows licence.
“The end game here is that the infamous Microsoft Tax that everyone seems to pay on their PCs anyway will become just that – a government-enforced levy, probably charged to the manufacturers of processors. Those in favour of Induce – such as Senator Orrin Hatch, father of the Act – would do well to take a cup of tea in Boston and remember what happens when unfair taxes are extorted by a distant and uncaring regime.”
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See:-
INDUCE – Josh Wattles on INDUCE, p2pnet, September 22, 2004
stimulates – Gartner: Piracy driving Linux PC shipments, Computerworld Australia, September 29, 2004
banned by law – Windows piracy must not harm Linux, ZDNet UK, September 30, 2004
October 1st, 2004 at 4:51 pm
Gartner Linux piracy claim is pants
Open Sourcers strike back
By Nick Farrell: Friday 01 October 2004, 09:50
A CLAIM by IT experts the Gartner Group that Linux downloads are a cover for piracy has been dismissed by the Open Source Industry Association (OSIA).
The Big G’s claim (see here), was that more than three quarters of Linux shipments are likely to end up running Windows and very often pirated versions.
However the OSIA told the Sydney Morning Herald that if Gartner’s conclusion that pre-installing Linux encouraged people to steal copies of Windows were correct, then this “tenuous logic” could be extended. It would be possible to state that pre-installing Windows encourages people to pirate application software.
An OSIA spokesman said that if there was no Windows OS on the PC, then users couldn’t pirate other products like Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office or Dreamweaver which need Windows in order to be used.
The Association said that Gartner’s thought process led to such ridiculous conclusions and it was surprised that the analysts started down this route. The spokesman added there was no advantage for PC resellers who tried to use Linux as a means of shipping lower priced PCs.
He said the vendors could ship a PC without any operating system at all which would be cheaper than putting Linux on it.
If PC vendors were selling Linux pre-installed computers that can only mean there is demand for Linux on the desktop.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=18812
TT