According to contacts in the press, Bill Gates is about to announce a new “philanthropic initiative”. Selected groups within developing countries will be offered starter editions of MS-Windows for one USD and MS-Office for two USD.

This isn’t philanthropy. The reality of life in developing countries is that you can get pirate copies of any commercial software for pennies. Microsoft is merely acknowledging that its better to get one or two dollars than nothing at all

This is part of a well established Microsoft policy

“Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

This is the start of the collection process.

Open-source software like OpenOffice.org is still a better solution

• we don’t offer a ‘poor persons version’ - everyone gets the full version of the software
• we don’t encourage dependency on first world monopolies - our community model empowers local communities and encourages self-help and local development
• as Microsoft deploys increasingly sophisticated anti-piracy technology, it will “figure out how to collect” more and more valuable foreign currency from countries who have become addicted to their software
• mother language support is key for developing economies. Even a corporation as rich as Microsoft cannot offer full mother language support on a commercial basis. OpenOffice.org prevents digital exclusion and supports endangered languages by enabling local speakers to form their own native-language projects

Beware - this gift-horse is designed to bite long term.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Fairtrade, OpenOffice.org. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.