Ballmer to Hu: 90% of Microsoft customers in China using pirated software

I thought this had always been a MSFT business plan? Given that very few people in china are going to spend a years salary on a full copy of MS Office the alternatives are:<p>1, They develop their own local software<p>2, They adopt and localize some open source software<p>3, They pirate your software making you a defacto standard<p>Which would you prefer - long term?

So is the case with most asian countries. So I asked around - why arent you using Libreoffice ?<p>1. Most cases - excel support is lacking. Yup, they did google for "cheap office" and try out OpenOffice.<p>2. Local language support - nobody really has it. But Windows (not just Office) has nicer ways to find and install fonts.<p>Oh and the name "libreoffice" is REALLY, REALLY not working out in Asia. Even for english speaking ones.<p>&#60;begin rant&#62; Asiatic scripts (especially China and India) need smart fonts - <a href="http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/52884" rel="nofollow">http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/52884</a><p>However, the <i>default</i> font technology in most open source stacks is Harfbuzz and not SIL Graphite. The attitude towards graphite can be summarized thus (<a href="http://behdad.org/text/" rel="nofollow">http://behdad.org/text/</a>):<p><i>This allows for developing fonts for minority scripts and languages without having to update the engine first. For established scripts though, there is not much reason to prefer Graphite over OpenType.</i><p>And by minority scripts we mean 1/5th of the world's population, the two fastest growing economies and open source friendly governments. &#60;/end rant&#62;

Given two super powers, one infested with patents and IP laws that limit progress, the other one with zero patent laws where everybody can further develop the work of others, which one do you think will progress faster?<p>If I was the chinese president I would be flipping the bird to the cameras with a smile in my face.

Hu to Ballmer: Ha ha!<p>Could it be MS is estimating the Windows install base is much larger than it really is?

Similar situation in the Philippines. All the Filipino developers I know learned their craft with pirated copies of MSFT software.

One more price differential "Western" workers are working against.<p>I recall when India was starting up its external-facing tech industry. There were a few conversations about how one way they kept costs down was by not paying for any software licenses.<p>I found and find it ironic, that the same companies that are so gung ho about IP rights in the "West", were (and are) perfectly willing to take advantage of their disregard when seeking lower prices by farming work out to "developing economies".<p>At this point, I respect IP inasmuch as it can break me financially or maybe get me thrown in the pokey. Morally, though? I'll make my decisions on an individual basis, but I find I have no respect nor regard for a great deal of claimed rights. The claimants are bald faced hypocrites.

Why don't they make their most valuable features only work if a valid license was shown to a server within the last week?<p>Seems like there's no way Google Apps could have unauthorized users precisely because you do need to login to their servers.<p>There advantages to having Office installed locally, but surely this is a big enough problem to change how things work. 90% is a lot.

Actually it's more than 99%.

Related: Previously, on Hacker News: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1594521" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1594521</a>

Yes, because the Chinese are way to smart to pay for the crap that Microsoft produces.

A little off topic, but now I'm very interested: How does Google docs make money? I don't recall ever being targeted for an ad by the content, and obviously regular users don't pay.