From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Nov 29 11:47:24 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from freebie.atkielski.com (ASt-Lambert-101-2-1-14.abo.wanadoo.fr [193.251.59.14]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A29537B419 for ; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 11:47:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from contactdish (win.atkielski.com [10.0.0.10]) by freebie.atkielski.com (8.11.3/8.11.3) with SMTP id fATJkcx04229; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 20:46:38 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from anthony@freebie.atkielski.com) Message-ID: <02ac01c1790e$96f842c0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> From: "Anthony Atkielski" To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" , "Andrew C. Hornback" , "Mike Meyer" Cc: References: <000301c178cb$d105d880$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 20:46:38 +0100 Organization: Anthony's Home Page (development site) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Ted writes: > Your arguing from a United States viewpoint in > a world forum, and you don't understand it. Why would I argue from a "United States" viewpoint? > Overseas, though, things are much different. In > many countries there is no real history of Windows > usage, and do you know why that is? It's because the > dominant commercial desktop OS for years and years > was OS/2! The commercial desktop OS today is Windows in Europe. Most of the rest of the world doesn't matter, anyway, since it has yet to discover running water. I don't know what leads in the handful of other countries outside the U.S. with healthy infrastructures, such as Japan or Australia. > Also, there's lots of countries where Windows > has not been localized to that country. And FreeBSD has? > It's simple - overseas they are used to paying a > lot more for Microsoft products than we are and > I daresay that the total amount of piracy of Windows > overseas (discounting Asia where piracy is an > institution) in businesses is far less than here in > the US. The actual figures are just the opposite. The U.S. has one of the lowest piracy rates in the world. Piracy is a major problem even in Europe, especially in Southern Europe, where petty dishonesty is a cultural institution. Italy is one of the worst offenders (in Western Europe--in Eastern Europe everything is stolen), as I recall. > Just look at the financial reports for any large > domestic software vendor who has overseas sales > broken out and you will see this. About 80% of Microsoft's sales come from outside the U.S. > In summary, your arguing from a classic "tech" > position where you simply don't take any of the > financial/business/political issues into account ... I've seen the figures. Your assertions concerning piracy and overseas revenue are the opposite of reality. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message