[PLUG-TALK] Bill Gates says Piracy Good for Business

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 11 Jul 2007, Michael Rasmussen wrote:

>  Today Gates openly concedes that tolerating piracy turned out to be
> Microsoft's best long-term strategy. That's why Windows is used on an
> estimated 90% of China's 120 million PCs.

   Well, shoot! Ashton-Tate came up with this business model in the early
1980s. There were so many pirated copies of dBASE II and dBASE III that it
became the de facto database standard for DOS. When clients bought a
customized application from a developer who used a pirated copy, they bought
a licensed copy of the DBMS and A-T made a lot of money that way. For a
while.

   Wonder if the prevalence of Winduhs on computers over there is related to
the shoddy -- and dangerous -- products they've been producing and now
exporting to the rest of the world.

Rich

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