[Gllug] Voluntary work

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Thu, 2003-11-13 at 12:41, Sean Tohill wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 itsbruce at uklinux.net wrote:

> > MS already offer their software at hugely discounted prices to charities
> > and educational establishments.  In these and other cases they recognise
> > that it is more important for their software to be ubiquitous than
> > expensive.

They tacitly condone piracy in countries where it's their only way to
get market share too, knowing that once they get people hooked on their
freebies, they can squeeze for cash later. Has anyone else noticed the
similarity the software market has to the the proscribed drug market?
Not that I'm a cynic or anything of course.....

> here at the university of westminster our students can get a copy of
> office, visual studio, xp etc for the price of the cd's and cost of
> someone's time to make the copies. they get a genuine serial number and a
> licence for as long as they are on a course here. 

And when they leave, they go work somewhere. And they convice their
employer to buy Microsoft. MS probably sees 10 times the revenue from
that software that they do from copies that people pay full price for.

Mike.



-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug