Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnClif
Okay, so you're saying that because Microsoft is a billion dollar company it's okay to rip them off? Microsoft also employs almost 100,000 people who need to feed their families and pay their bills. Bill Gates has given away billions and plans to give away billions more, primarily in the Third World. Hundreds of thousands of people who live near Microsoft offices are dependent upon Microsoft and its employees for their jobs, and most of those people are lower- and middle-class. There are literally hundreds of spinoffs from ex-Microsoft people that employee tens of thousands of other people (Real Networks, Expedia, Zillow, etc., etc.), and they would not exist if Microsoft hadn't been successful.
Stealing is stealing. Whether the victim is penniless or a billionaire is irrelevant. All this BS about greed, etc., is just hand-waving to excuse theft. And you wonder why DRM is prevalent? Perhaps it's because companies like Microsoft originally chose NOT to protect their software... and got massively ripped off, by people like you who rationalized their thievery.
I'm all for giving the customer control of what they purchase, but saying Microsoft DESERVES to get ripped off? Sheesh!
|
No, he wasn't saying anything of the sort. I believe the point he was making was that Microsoft has - and I was witness to some of this - used it's OS clout to destroy application developers. Thus, the fact that MacOS and Linux are on the rise is directly attributable to the FUD tactics and greed of Microsoft.
Derek