The paradox comes in deciding what this means. Is Windows piracy boosting Linux numbers, or is Linux encouraging Windows piracy? Either way there's irony enough for both sides, and the FUD index has gone up by a couple of notches. That is in nobody's interests. Yet the implications could be far worse than that.
Microsoft has argued in the past that shipping PCs free of any OS encourages piracy. This has seemed like self-interested bluster and is in any case ineffectual in the face of free operating systems. Are vendors who sell computers with a very lightweight option such as FreeDOS really any different from those who sell those with none at all? If people want to obtain their OS separately from their hardware, who's to say no? Free choice often includes the option to sin: it's not to date been a good enough argument to ban free choice itself.
Yet if the Induce Act currently being debated by the US government manages to pass, anything that looks like encouragement to piracy could be held to be as illegal as the piracy itself. This raises the interesting idea that sales of any PC pre-installed with an OS that is cheaper and less popular than the market leader will be banned by law. It's then hard to avoid banning the sale of motherboards and other components or the second-hand sales of computers themselves – all acts that could encourage people to avoid paying the Windows licence.
The end game here is that the infamous Microsoft Tax that everyone seems to pay on their PCs anyway will become just that -- a government-enforced levy, probably charged to the manufacturers of processors. Those in favour of Induce -- such as Senator Orrin Hatch, father of the Act -- would do well to take a cup of tea in Boston and remember what happens when unfair taxes are extorted by a distant and uncaring regime.
Talkback
Hmmm, Orin Hatch? Isn't he the daddy of one of the SCO criminals?
Oops, sorry, I mean SCO directors.
Gartner's Logic has a hole big enough to float an oil tanker through it.
The article is about a situation that exists in markets where retail buyers can buy PC's with NO OS on them at all.
If they want to install a pirated Windows OS on those machines they can do so without pretending they are going to run Linux on them.
Since the PC's w/no OS are cheaper (No install charge) than those with an OS on them, why would they bother to pay for something they don't have to buy and won't use? In the parts of the world where a PC costs 8 month's wages, saving money matters more than you can imagine.
As for Windows user's not being able to deal with using Linux, I point you at the following:
In Norwich Connecticut, near resorts (casino's) that have a number of international visitors, Linux thin clients are installed for use by the public for Internet Browsing and Word processing.
Both the local patrons, and international drop-ins (who use the computers to send emails and make travel arrangements) are able to use the Linux systems without any training.
Why? Because everything they need to know about how to use the Linux system, they have already learned when they learned how to use a windows system. Everything they see on these machines behaves exactly as they expect it to. It is just like the windows machine they are so familiar with.
Oh, there are "some" differences. These don't crash or get hung up. And the user's can't mess up the systems configurations or settings. They restore that information (without being rebooted) each time a new user session is started.