jerry parker

How to Win the China Piracy Battle

interesting read.

however, when it comes to sfwr, i've heard that even MSFT has been playing games and then blaming it on chinese piracy - they want to have their cake and eat it to.
what i heard is that MSFT deliberately puts out fake copies of their own windows operating system to make sure that it's still the OS of choice for the chinese as the dominant sfwr.

why would they do that?
if 95% of the individual users and private businesses switched over to free/linux type OS(even if initially inferior)...and only the fortune 500 companies were left to buy ligitimate MSFT windows and office products, how big would the chinese market be? Not too big i would guess.

therefore, it's in MSFT's best interest to keep their software as the DOMINANT choice and majority market leader...even if it means giving away free "fake" ones.

Btw, I don't have a problem with MSFT for taking that strategy.
however, don't blame all of the piracy on the local chinese people.

buzz