[photopress:lenovo1.jpg,full,alignright]Lenovo, now the world’s No. 3 PC maker, has said it will make laptops preloaded with Novell Suse Linux. The company plans to have the Linux sets on sale by the end of the year.
Bryan Ma, IDC’s Asia-Pacific director of personal systems research, expressed doubt that the latest show of support from PC makers truly reflects a growing Linux fan base in Asia. Instead, Bryan Ma believes there is a portion of users who buy the cheaper Linux sets only to install pirated versions of Microsoft Windows on these systems.
He said, ‘In most of the countries in Asia, save for some like Singapore, pirated software can still be readily found. It’s a trend that’s been going on for a good number of years in the region.’
According to figures from the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the Asia-Pacific average piracy rate, including Australia and Japan, stood at 55%. The BSA also puts out its usual estimated revenue losses due to piracy but these have never been based on reality. The BSA has always worked on the basis that any copy of a pirated program is the equivalent of the retail cost of the equivalent. It ignores the fact that if the pirated copy is not available a free, open source, copy nearly always is.
Bryan Ma was correct when he said: ‘Consumers are very price-sensitive, and may not be as resistant to using pirated software as businesses because there is a lower likelihood of someone doing a spot check on your household.’
This is true but if it comes to the crunch users can, and do, set up equipment totally with open source — free — software. The writer has just bought an Acer on which this is being written. It came with Windows Vista installed which slowed the machine so that it ran like the Dead March from Saul. A legal, proper copy of Windows XP was installed instead which increased the apparent speed threeefold. All, without any exceptions, all of the other software is freeware, Open Source.
This sort of activity has been declared by Steve Balmer of Microsoft as being unAmerican. True. But the writer is not from the United States and the free software frequently does the job much, much better than the proprietary equivalent — this is especially true in virus protection, word processing and graphics programs — and the price is right.
If the BSA managed to stop all pirated software — not likely but assume it is possible — it would be the biggest boost freeware has ever seen. It would not massively increase the sales of over-bloated and over-priced software which is so often the target of piracy.
Source: BusinessWeek
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