Random thought: Windows is largely successful because of Piracy
Random thought: Windows is largely successful because of Piracy
Windows as a software package would have never been affordable to individuals or local-level orgs in countries like India and Bangladesh (especially in the 2000's) that are now powerhouses of IT. Same for many SE Asian, Eastern European, African and LatinoAmerican countries as well.
Had the OS been too difficult to pirate, educators and local institutions in these countries would have certainly shifted to Linux and the like. The fact that Windows could be pirated easily is the main factor that led to its ubiquity and allowed it to become a household name. Its rapid popularity in the '00s and early '10s cemented its status as the PC operating system. It is probably the same for Microsoft Office as well (it is still a part of many schools' standard curricula).
The fact that Windows still remains pirateable to this day is perhaps intentional on Microsoft's part.
Absolutely, and Microsoft knows this. You could even upgrade a pirated version of Windows to a legit copy when they did the upgrade drive for 7 I believe it was. Did it myself. And they completely turn a blind eye to OEM key reselling, which is why you can get legit windows keys for less than $10 these days.
They've also never done anything substantial against pirates, all they do is pester about buying a key and warn about the risks. The "worst" they do is stop you from using windows update which some see as a feature. When they could just completely lock you out and/or report you to the police.
The money is in server for Microsoft, but they're losing that battle slowly but surely since they can't make windows actually work properly in a container setting. I have customers that love Microsoft but despite their best efforts at making containerized windows workloads work it just sucks major ass. And virtually everybody is coming around to realize just how insane of a paradigm shift containers are.
And losing that battle is why 12 will likely move to subscription. And I'm willing to bet money that, in 10 years time, will be considered the starting point for Microsofts dramatic loss of market share in the home PC market. From 90% or so now down to like 50 ish %. But maybe some smart guys at Microsoft will nip that in the bud.
Although I mostly agree with you, this is not true:
The "worst" they do is stop you from using windows update
The worst they do is practically force you to buy a windows license with most laptops and even some pre-built tower PCs.
Yes there are some vendors/manufacturers who don't force you or ask, if you want an Ubuntu/Mint/Pop_!OS or smth. but most just don't give a shit.
in my country vendors are forced to offer a free OS/no OS option.
most new laptops here come with linux preinstalled lol
I would argue there's nothing to snip in the bud, since the home PC is a dying breed anyway. It is increasingly only used by hobbyists and professionals. Some people will use a laptop issued from work but the choice of OS in those cases is seldom theirs. Other than that it's all phones, tablets, consoles, TVs etc.
The PC market itself is shrinking.
PCs are expensive and unpractical.
I wanted a PC, bought a tablet. Ideally, I'd want a SFFPC plus screens that I could easily move. I'd settle for a SFFPC with a dedicated graphics card if I couldn't move it. I'd also settle for a notebook that would allow me to easily swap HDDs/SSDs. However, none of those things are possible and/or have a good cost-benefit, so I got a tablet.
Notebooks are too clunky compared to tablets because they are attached to a keyboard and to a screen. If those parts were removable, they would be more successful. Tablets would also be more popular if you could use them as PC screens (some from Lenovo already come with this featur).
Manufacturers are moving in the opposite direction, soldering memory, and making as hard as possible to change parts.
I don't disagree with PCs being on a strong downward trend. But the point of Windows on PCs has always been familiarity such that it's what's prefered and feel easiest for servers. Without their domination of home PC no company would be running Windows Server these days. And the last people to stop using PCs at home are bound to be tech people that have some say in what type of servers to run.
That said Microsoft has been divesting from their reliance on Windows Server so it's not like they'll die from this. But it's going to mean we'll hopefully be rid of Windows Server soon!
I'm not sure I buy that 12 is going to be subscription based. I think that would be the straw that broke the camels back. I think we are peak subscription at this point, it's getting hard to justify this ever growing faucet of money outflows to these friggin subscriptions. Cell phones are quickly becoming PC replacements too. Maybe not in our lives, but for a lot of the common folks that just want to browse and email, absolutely they are. This is why you are seeing Apple's OS and Android increasingly becoming more PC-like. The next battlefield, I think, is going to be Android vs Windows. Android is currently free, which isn't going to bode well for a 12 subscription model.
When most people bought their PCs, Windows was already bought and paid for and installed by the vendor, so piracy might not have hit as hard as you think.
If you’re Microsoft, that last thing you want is people having a choice of operating system - either in the store, or when they get home - so you make sure it’s a done deal before the PC is unboxed.
That’s SOP for Microsoft, and what got them into trouble when they were bundling Internet Explorer.
It’s also worth noting, that Linux hasn’t always been a competitive desktop product for the home market.
In 2000s at least in SEA most likely the installed windows when buying a new PC or Laptop is pirated copy. Even now you can request that if the laptop is not bundled with Genuine Windows
Same with South Asia. That's how the independent resellers do it. The authorised resellers either mark up the price for the Windows license or sell without an OS for a reduced price.
Yeah, solid take. Even today, the vast vast majority of people don’t even realize Windows isn’t free because every single PC sold, comes with it, preinstalled.
Microsoft’s real dominance is having schools (pre and post secondary), businesses, governments and just about anyone they can force a license on to run their software. Windows, Office (a third of my first year computer course was learning MS Office ffs), etc.
That’s why they got slammed with a multi million dollar class action: https://www.thatsuitemoney.ca/ for manipulating their licensing and subsequent fees associated.
Sadly, a pittance when compared to how much they got from all those shady deals. Piracy doesn’t even touch them.
This is far from true in 3rd world. People buy pc without os, the shop helped customers install pirated version because its way more cheaper than buying preinstalled windows pc. There's people who still remember the windows cd key by heart more than they remember their spouse's birth date.
Microsoft has openly encouraged piracy as far back as the 90s. I remember an interview with Gates where he said as much.
This has been part of Microsoft's business model, especially for Windows and Office for 30 years. They actively encouraged pirating the software to ensure it cemented itself as the defacto standard in homes and offices with a view that one day users would have no choice but pay for it. For over 20 years now this has been part of the bigger desktop-as-a-service goal.
Soon businesses and home users will have no choice but to remotely log into a Windows system that is hosted in a datacentre and provided by Microsoft or one of their partners. Local installs will be a thing of the past. Think Citrix Presentation Server and thin clients which is where this whole idea started a long time ago.
Nah that's just for high security government systems, if you run a small business or something you might not want to fuck around with thin clients unless you're working directly with big databases and stuff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
Ignoring unauthorized copying
... Bill Gates said "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
The practice allowed Microsoft to gain some dominance over the Chinese market and only then taking measures against unauthorized copies. In 2008, by means of the Windows update mechanism, a verification program called "Windows Genuine Advantage" (WGA) was downloaded and installed. When WGA detects that the copy of Windows is not genuine, it periodically turns the user's screen black. This behavior angered users and generated complaints in China with a lawyer stating that "Microsoft uses its monopoly to bundle its updates with the validation programs and forces its users to verify the genuineness of their software".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
... the documents identified open-source software, and in particular the Linux operating system, as a major threat to Microsoft's domination of the software industry, and suggested tactics Microsoft could use to disrupt the progress of open-source software.
Windows is largely successful because there was nothing else good enough for Intel to use back in the late 80s. They struck a partnership and it took off, indoctrinating people into the Windows way of life for decades to come. Most people hate new tech, it means that they have to learn something new that they'd rather not (akin to telling someone to write with the opposite hand than the one they've been using their entire lives), even if that thing is simple. Piracy just strengthened that already strong foothold that they had.
In most countries other than those in Western Europe, North America, Japan and China, computers arrived roughly a decade late. In fact PCs never ended up being used in the mainstream till the late 90's/early '00s in India, a lot of options had matured by then.
"a lot of options" like what? You have OS X and Linux. OS X only runs on Apple hardware (not including Hackintoshes) and Linux is still seen as less desirable than Windows, because everyone and their grandmother has used Windows at some point in their lives. They've probably never even heard of Linux. If they've never heard of Linux, they've definitely never heard of BSD or Solaris.
By the 2000s Microsoft was the dominant force in computing, Apple was suffering and only regained its foothold in the market after Steve Jobs came back in 97,and it still took years to become popular. Apple was always seen as a premium product so of course it wouldn't be popular in countries like India. The only way you can usually get Linux on a PC is to build it yourself and install it, or buy it from the very few manufacturers that actually sell a computer with it pre-installed. So what does that leave? Windows.
Windows being easy to pirate wasnt the reason for it's popularity. It had market share because they allowed for it to be preinstalled on machines for virtually nothing. They allowed it to be preinstalled on machines for virtually nothing because the OS wasn't the flagship product.
MS Office has always been the major flagship product for the company. This was true in 1994 and still is today. Office is so important to their revenue streams that it's fairly common knowledge and has been mentioned by former employees that OS development would focus on compatibility with Office programs, not the other way around.
Specifically if you look at the years around Office XP and 2003, that suite is used very much as a CVS. They deprecate their operating systems using Office.
That's the genius of proprietary software business models, also adobe is guilty of this, let people pirate your software so they dominate using your software. Once their skills are built on it once they get to the workforce they won't even question using a libre alternative. In the end they manage to dominate the market
I think Windows is successful because it was defacto preinstalled on all computers. Even people in third world countries are buying computers whole, not a basket of parts to assemble.
Also software. You're not going to assemble a computer, install Linux, and then not be able to run anything on it. You want to run all the software that was built to run on Windows, which was built to run on Windows because it came installed on every computer, etc. (Remember Linux back then really couldn't run all that much. No office? No games? You're toast.)
Not true. People wouldn't buy a pre-installed windows because its much way expensive. They just buy a preinstalled pirated windows instead.
windows is largely successful because of oems.
the major OEMs basically get paid to put windows on the systems they sell. they get the licenses at a deep discount, then top that off with the money coming in for the preinstalled garbage.
@cupcakezealot @people_are_cute Windows is successful because Microsoft made OEMs sign an agreement that if they sold Windows at all, they had to install it on every single computer. Standard capitalist bully tactics.
yup ADOBE is exactly the same.
they do it on purpose for the exact same reason you are mentioning.
Eh. Adobe puts more effort into making it harder or tedious.
With the introduction of Creative Cloud, the notorious "amtlib.dll" that houses Adobe licensing, was bundled into the respective applications binary (exe). It didn't stop pirates. In 24 hours they found the licensing mechanism and patched it.
You could create a CC account, install the desktop manager, install any app(s) you wanted, then crack them. When an update arrived, you could simply update the app(s) and apply the crack again.
Occasionally the licensing mechanism would update and an updated crack would be needed. As usual, pirates had this worked out the day of or a day later.
Adobe would later patch the desktop manager and break functionality to update software if it wasn't genuine. People could still get the latest versions by uninstalling and reinstalling through the desktop manager. Since it would retain user settings by default.
Later, a mechanism was built into each application that would throw a warning message that the application isn't genuine. For example, Photoshop would soft lock and the genuine check would display with the only option to close. This too was eventually patched out by pirates.
The latest attempt from Adobe now forces users to input and have a credit or debit card saved before activating a trial. This removed the ability for users to easily install software anonymously.
The same goes for a lot of big-name software.
They know you're pirating their software. Almost everything phones home, whether you pirate it or not. Unless the ping comes from a MAC address of a machine bought by a company, they don't care.
It's even becoming an over the table tactic. For example you can use software like Fusion360 or unreal engine completely free until your business is over a certain revenue threshold.
which is why my machine has a strict firewall installed
Windows as a software package would have never been affordable to individuals or local-level orgs in countries like India and Bangladesh (especially in the 2000’s) that are now powerhouses of IT. ... Had the OS been too difficult to pirate, educators and local institutions in these countries would have certainly shifted to Linux and the like.
While i somewhat agree with your overall statement, this part is just wrong. Linux in the late 1990s and 2000s was very different from today, where you just plug in a CD/USB and select your region. Linux back then was very nerdy, you had to choose your hardware first to make sure there was a linux driver and the installation process was very difficult, especially before plug&play where you had to know which IRQs and slots you had to use for network, sound and videocard to avoid conflicts. I remember trying to install Linux from a CD, only to work my war from one error message to the next because it did not like my videocard, soundcard or both.
Also, what would you do with a linux pc at home or at work if it could not run word, excel, duke nukem 3D, TTD, programs you knew from work/school or software you could pirate from your friends?
PTSD...
I once destroyed a CRT monitor by misconfiguring X11.
Nowadays Linux just works to the point where my 72 year old mother is able to deal with Pop_OS without issue.
But man, those early days of unstable drivers, slow dial-up internet, and navigating through Usenet and IRC for decent support was a nightmarish labor of love.
The silky smoothness that we have now was built on caffeine and the backs of millions of greybeards.
(For the record: "Greybeard" is a nerdy term of endearment that I've seen adopted by people identifying all across the rainbow. Kinda like dwarfs on Discworld).
Linux's development would have accelerated a lot had there been more demand. There wasn't enough demand because pirated Windows was getting the work done.
In the 90s there where a lot more OS available to compete agains windows, who already had existing software (sometimes better and more capable) to compete with windows: MacOS (Popular in print, layout), BeOS, OS2/warp (tried to replace windows), Amiga OS (best for video editing work at the time), Atari, Novell Netware.
It's not exactly like people where desperate for another OS at this point in the late 90s/early 2000s.
I don't think that necessarily holds true for OSS. The average user with no development experience wanting to use an open source project doesn't mean it will always develop faster.
I remember trying to get wireless working and having ndiswrapper wrap the windows drivers and having it fail epically
You are right, but it's not just poor developed countries and not just windows either.
Back in the 1990s, copy protection in general was weak and companies wishing to expand market share did not prioritize combating piracy.
They always just focused on making the big companies pay through licensing audits and kept prices high to ensure revenue.
The whole industry just accepted that students, researchers and tinkerers would pirate their software.
Photoshop, Office, Visual Studio and even enterprise software like Oracle had this dual strategy: let piracy help spread market share among those who can't or won't pay, while maintaining high prices and security audits to drive revenue from companies.
Many companies still follow this strategy.
...and they knew it from the beginning.
Even the MPAA and RIAA know piracy fuels culture and makes golden hits into platinum hits and boost sequel album sales and auxiliary items (toys and lunchboxes).
They can't help themselves because to the execs and shareholders, it feels like lost sales and theft. And the DRM market capitalizes on those feelings.
Pirate Linux!
Wait...
Same with Photoshop, Maya etc. These corps know that letting consumers pirate their software will create more legit end users. Since people will get used to their software and won’t easily switch when they enter the professional workforce where these corps don’t condone piracy and actually audit businesses. At least in Western nations they even audit small businesses. Like my friend used to work at a small engineering firm in the Netherlands and Autodesk came by to audit the CAD licenses.
How do those companies audit businesses that they don't know are using their software? Do they have a special force built just to track creative releases from indie makers?
at work we once bought licenses from Autodesk and one day, when we realized that we didn't need it anymore and we could use a better alternative, they sent us a letter where they assumed that we stopped paying because we started to pirate. They basically threatened us to allow to run some malware on our computers to check compliance, or someone could tip us off to local authorities. They even tried to bribe the person who read the letter by ending the letter with something like "in case of piracy, the whistleblower could be rewarded financially". It was a regular mail, so we just ignored it.
Yup, when I was talking with a few different Microsoft representatives, they just straightforwardly stated that they don’t focus at all on punishing or pushing consequences for “obtained/purchased windows instances via any existing alternative/not supported ways” when it comes to private/home users.
They surely and happily will put the idea of buying a key or official upgrade from their certified resellers locally or online on the table.
It is quite a different story with larger organizations and companies.
—
Of course all this info is based on just a few talks during the last decade and with incoming subscription (ugh) model a lot will change, I guess.
Not really. Offices were one of the major early adopters of computers and windows is perfect for them with plethora of features they offered right out of the package.
Windows GUI was groundbreaking, their text processing and excel was a game changer, and windows doesn't allow you to delete your own boot partition with a sudo command so it was pretty idiot proof.
Once windows had the majority of marketshare, it was pretty obvious that whoever was buying PCs (back in the day it was more that a dad got a PC from his office or bought one which was similar), got it with windows.
microsoft owns github
microsoft owns windows
mas is used to pirate windows
mas is hosted on github
hmmmm...
Its not random thoughts, its the reality and msft knows it and they let it happened same as adobe with photoshop. They let students pirate their softwares so that by the time they graduated and enter the work field, they'd keep using it in their new job/company, where they would charge real expensive money for the license
I think it is the other way around; easy pirate versions appeared becuz windows was popular, providing access to those who can't afford.
Or Windows just works on so much different hardware. You can build a PC with the weirdest mix and match of hardware, and Windows will just.. work. Also I bought a Microsoft sidewinder wheel from 1998 from a thrift store for $8, plugged it into my Windows 10 PC, and it just worked. Nothing special was needed. 1998 hardware literally plug and play on Windows 10 (and I've tested it on 11, and it works the same).
You can install MacOS on non-Apple hardware, but you need to buy very specific hardware, and download very specific hacks, to make it work.
Even Linux only works on specific hardware. This entire thread has people talking about how broken Linux is on their setups. The suggestions are to buy specific hardware and run very specific versions of Linux.
For private individuals and small institutions, yes, they would definitely use linux if windows was 100% impossible to pirate.
For corporations and bigger institutions, no, they would 100% continue to use windows just because of the control they can have on their devices, group policies, single sign on, and so on. It's possible to do that on Linux, but not as easily. They're already paying 15 dollars / month to microsoft just for AAD/entra/[whatever they call it this week] or even more to have office integrated with that and $200 for a permanent license for a single PC is a drop in the bucket
Linux is designed to be able to do group policies like that very well
Remember, Linux originates back from the terminal days, and the vast majority of servers run Linux. If any OS is made to function well in large organizations, it's Linux. Windows is popular on desktop for reasons other than better group policies.
group policies, single sign on, and so on. It's possible to do that on Linux, but not as easily.
It is just as easy, if you have a sysadmin who knows what they're doing. Which is the case for Microsoft too, you need someone knowledgeable for the implementation and management anyway.
This is where Windows being "free" and everywhere comes in, everybody buys Microsoft without a second thought.
When I was working IT in a place that produced transcripts - so we had loads of typists all using Windows and MS Word loaded down with a thousand macros - the IT department made all of the servers linux based, and all our production was stored on samba shares. The only reason they hadn't transitioned the entire workforce to linux was resistance from management.
I imagine there would've been resistance from users too, but all of the inertia was due to familiarity and had absolutely nothing to do with technical barriers. The entire IT team was frothing at the mouth to be free of Microsoft's arbitrary BS. Windows caused us no end of headaches.
In fact, because every typist needed a browser open at all times to research legal terms and other details, I had a number of people complain their computer was running slowly. For every one of them, I installed firefox and made it the default browser and told them they'd need to login to all of their online accounts again. Every single one told me I'd "fixed the computer" and it "works so much better now".
I think this is really true. In 2000s people used to pirate everything (at least where I am from). And even now, apple marketshare is never big compared to US for example.
I mean sure in those countries maybe. But the vast majority of people using windows in North America would still be using Windows (And possibly Europe, but I cant speak for Europe) even if it wasnt easily piratable.
I saw a yt video few years ago about how microsoft allowed windows piracy on South Asian countries to increase windows adoption rate.
From a private end user point of view yes. But in enterprises Windows and Office is successful. Lots of money is going to Microsoft here.
Windows and Office were successful in enterprises precisely because they were popular and the familiar choice among staff. They got popular from piracy.
it's a bit disingenuous to think that corporations are using windows just because employees are familiar with that. Unless the work is only using a web browser, you need programs and stuff, you don't simply switch to Linux. Especially when "familiar with windows" for an average employee it just means "know where the icons are, and open Facebook in a browser".
A corporation would surely love to save $100k if they could just have a windows skin on Linux and force employees to watch a 1-hour video on training to use the new system. But then if they need to run [PROGRAM X]? and if they need to run [PROGRAM Y]? And what if some quirk of running [PROGRAM Z] on Wine introduces some bug that causes slowdowns and monetary loss?
They intentionally choose windows, and they will pay whatever Microsoft tells them because:
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they can have support from less specialized (=cheaper) techs
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they can control everything of their computers from a centralized position. If they want, they can force push the goatse image as the wallpaper on each single employee and nobody could change that.
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it works well with the programs they use, and they are in a configuration that can be supported by techs
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I read something similar many years ago where Microsoft intentionally wanted people to use use pirated windows to increase their user base.
They still do. There's so much shit in Windows 10/11that could phone home and shut down your install if you don't have a valid license, but Microsoft doesn't actually give a shit if you have a license or not. They just want to make sure you have their botnet installed and not any other OS.
Out of the 4 laptops i used recently, 3 of them were using a pirated version of windows. 1 of them(my laptop) didnt use a pirated version of windows because it was already paid when i bought the laptop. I thought all laptops(that are not using macos or linux) came with windows preistalled
In all Latinoamerica, yes, in the 2000s the Windows xp license was a significant part of the price of a computer, so most people pirate it, probably 7 out of 10 copys of Xp were installed an activated by piracy
1111111111111.
Just saying.
The vast majority of the value of a consumer facing computer system is in the people who help other people.
They know that.
Maybe, but there's also the thing where it works reliably and you have software you can use. But yeah, it's still part of the strategy
One of the zillion reasons why piracy is morally correct and the exact reason I will never pirate. (use open source instead)