Microsoft "intentional" piracy myth ?

Hi,
Some people say Microsoft intentionally tolerates (a little) piracy in order to penetrate the markets more ?
Is it true or total nonsense ?
Thanks

Microsoft has always been a staunch opponent of piracy. About 20 years ago they impulsed the Business Software Alliance which went after companies suspected of using pirated software.

I doubt extremely much they would tolerate piracy in order to increase their penetration. Heck, they are already in a dominant position with Office and Windows.

That said, it is impossible even for them to go after each individual who may be using pirated software. Especially since the inception of torrents.

So indeed, they tolerate, but simply because they cannot do otherwise.

In that respect, switching to subscription model online service is a drastic way to curb piracy.

Back in the 80’s WordPerfect got marketleader by doing so. Give away until you cannot be ignored anymore.

in the 80’s, everybody was being pirated. I remember buying a clone at an established store. The clone came with MS-DOS, Wordperfect, DBase, Harvard Graphics, GEM, Lotus 1-2-3 and several other applications. All of the software was pirate. These were the bad old days!

and nowadays everybody is being hacked.

I remember in the late 90ies how Microsoft Office was given away for free for students in Germany. You just needed to send your immatriculation of your University to Microsoft. This was also valid for Visual Studio but here they wanted a small service fee. Compared with the full price this was acceptable. The unwritten deal was: Each student grew up with Microsoft Software and within Microsoft Ecosystem. No wonder why Microsoft dominated business in the late 90ies and early 2K years. Once graded the former students were now decision makers in companies.

Another interesting aspect was, that Microsoft had no reglementions for commercial use. So you could work as software-developer in business with your educational Visual Studio Licenses. Other software companies like Macromedia didn’t allowed this for their products.

That is probably why Macromedia is no more.

Plus, their major sin is to have created that pest of Flash player…

Let’s rejoyce! Flash (Shockwave, Silverlight, Air) are so EOL… but Macromedia was bought by Adobe. Was funny back in those days. I used Coldfusion und Homesite from a small Company called Allaire. They got bought by Macromedia and then short time later Adobe sucked them all in like a vacuum cleaner… wasn’t nice cause everything went to Java then… did I mention that I hate Java?

Then you are going to LOVE this.

Be sure to check out each and every source file.

Ah Macromedia: I still love Fireworks. Best app for making icons for applications - ever. There is still no other app that does vector and pixel at the same time. When I update my main machine I will either have to run Fireworks in a virtual machine or get serious about a replacement.

haha!

		dim i as integer
		dim result as string
		dim check1, check2 as integer
		
		for i=1 to 100
				
				check1 = i mod 3
				check2 = i mod 5
				
				if check1 = 0 and check2 = 0 then 
						result =  "FizzBuzz("+str(i)+"), "
				elseif check1 = 0 then 
						result = "Fizz("+str(i)+"), "
				elseif check2 = 0 then 
						result = "Buzz("+str(i)+"), " 
				else 
						result = str(i) +", "
				end if
				
				out.Text = out.Text + result
				
		next

Actually, it was created by another company and then bought by Macromedia < Adobe Flash - Wikipedia > I remember looking at it, as a possible technology to use for the training material we were creating, but because it was an unknown company, management skipped over it and we used Authorware and then years later switching to Flash after it was bought…

Tolerate piracy to gain market share? I think that’s fanciful thinking of some coordinated conspiracy against the Microsoft shareholders. It implies that Microsoft willingly and/or purposely did not do enough to prevent piracy and thus made less money for the shareholders.

The reality is this was before Windows 10 and the phone home “features.” Windows had a serial number/cd-key but there were numerous ways to bypass it or simply enter your friends key. There was no mechanism for Microsoft to do anything further to prevent it given the constraints.

They succeeded despite every effort to prevent it because people steal. They are simply trying to make themselves feel better about stealing by claiming it was Microsoft’s plan all along for them to do so.

Yep still remember 777-777777 serials for Office 2003 I think. Basically you could take every number when the serial mod 7 = 0 :wink:

I wish I knew this back then…lol

Just because it’s easy doesn’t make it any less pirate-y.

thank you for this thread, was a trip back to history…

There seems to be something to this - just not world wide
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-gives-up-on-charging-for-windows-in-china/

Tomas - well…you could do something short and simple in Java to…but then it’s not Enterprise class code!

Whoever made that Git project nailed the over engineering that often goes into corporate Java code.

As to the actual thread topic…it’s not implausible that Microsoft has, at times, done less than they could have to stop pirating in order to solidify total marketshare. That wouldn’t be “against the shareholders” if data indicates beyond a given level of effort the pirates will simply move to another OS rather than pay.

But it’s also equally possible they’ve simply been one step behind pirates the entire time. Stuff like entering all 7’s sounds conspiracy-like, but a programmer who is over worked or who got tired of generating real keys for test cases is more likely.

Guess we’ll never know absent testimony from a Microsoft manager.

Git was made by Linus Torvalds creator of Linux. It was made purposefully to manage that project.

In the timeframe we are talking, Windows 95/98, Linux was not a credible threat. I don’t know that there was another operating system people would have flocked too if Windows wasn’t so easy to acquire.