It's true

Posted Oct 2, 2004 7:17 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

But I digress. My point: windows piracy has nothing to do with linux. Not in this particular case, never.

Directly, no. But indirectly... Few years ago RoverBooks was sold with Linux preinstalled but without support for half of installed hardware (winmodems, etc). It had CD with drivers for Windows attached - and for all hardware in this case. Now think: why they will ever do that ?

No, Linux is not directly responsible for "windows piracy" - yet it's used for that purpose quite often. You can say what you want about it but it'll not change basic facts.

There are also were versions with PTS-DOS - and then most of hardware was unsupported (including RAM above 16MB range LOL) and you were more or less forced to install some modern OS. So Linux is not alone in such usage.

It's mostly the same story as DeCSS: while initially this thing was not developed for piracy later it become widely used by pirates. Linux is going the same way. Do we need to fight it ? Probably not - it's not our fight. Do we need to admit and accept it ? Yes - it's fact of life. That's all.