MS Gives Free Licenses To Oppressed Nonprofits 151
victorl19 writes "Microsoft is vastly expanding its efforts to prevent governments from using software piracy inquiries as a pretext to suppress dissent. It plans to provide free software licenses to more than 500,000 advocacy groups, independent media outlets and other nonprofit organizations in 12 countries with tightly controlled governments, including Russia and China."
Not costing them anything. (Score:1, Insightful)
So basically, they're taking a bunch of organizations in countries that probably have a 95% or higher piracy rate, and giving them free licenses.
So it's costing Microsoft essentially squat, but potentially improves human rights in said countries.
Commendable, but not exactly as philanthropic as MS probably wants to come across as....
Re:Not costing them anything. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft always encouraged piracy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not costing them anything. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, what else would you expect them to do? Recently, Russia was raiding the offices of politically undesirable organizations using software piracy as an excuse, and Microsoft lawyers were involved. Microsoft had stopped agreeing to press charges once it became obvious that the government was just using them as an excuse. Now, they're going ever further than they already had and being explicit about who they are giving licenses to.
Just because it doesn't cost them anything doesn't mean it isn't still worth something. And providing free licenses is a big step up from not prosecuting pirates. They'll be able to get software updates and security patches, which will cut down on the amount of out-of-date, exploitable software out there to become part of spam bots, which is good for everyone.
Anything... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft, in its recent press efforts, has shown it is very concerned about free and open software. So now Microsoft is trying to disguise itself as a free and open software vendor. A crack dealer will give away free samples to obtain and retain a customer......
Think this is philantropic? (Score:1, Insightful)
Think again. Not doing it would a public relations disaster of epic proportions. As it stands it's an averted one. A narrowly averted public relations disaster.
The fact that they had to be told in the first place means they were well behind the curve -- as usual. I mean, seriously, they're the biggest software corp on earth, every resource you can think of. Think of what they didn't manage: A laid-back press conference saying they'd noticed years ago and quietly gave everyone they could think of a refund and free licenses. It's something you give your anti-piracy lawyers discretion to do, and hope to keep it quiet because of the abuse inherently possible with that, not something you want to have the nytimes splash all over the front page, forcing you to make an equally grand gesture to convince everyone you're not that evil.
FTFA: “We clearly have a very strong interest in ensuring that any antipiracy activities are being done for the purpose of reducing illegal piracy, and not for other purposes,” they say now, but that isn't what they always said: “Microsoft had long rejected requests from human-rights groups that it refrain from taking part in such cases, saying it was merely complying with Russian law.”
It's damage control, is what it is.
Re:Repost (Score:2, Insightful)
Not a repost. They seem to want to escape PR of this http://tinyurl.com/2usjw6p [tinyurl.com] [yhrm.org] has a link to a letter sent back ~April 15 2010.
They could end up being accused of interfering in internal politics of another country by subsidising dissident groups.
No good way out of this really.
Re:Not costing them anything. (Score:5, Insightful)
"To you, maybe, but Microsoft could bankrupt itself inventing a machine that causes piles of food to appear in every village in Africa at the push of a button, and it wouldn't come across as philanthropic to Slashdot."
Hey, the guy or girl you're replying to does not speak for slashdot. Neither do I, just to set the record straight.
I don't like MS. I don't like their business practices. I don't like their efforts to frame things like .Net as cross platform. I don't like them when they're actively trying to screw things up for the FOSS world, and I don't like them when they're pretending to be friends. I have mixed feelings about their OS and office products and I try not to spend too much time using either.
All that said, well done Microsoft for this move. This is a good thing. It's perhaps not going to stop bad governments raiding some of these NGOs, but it does remove one more way they could try and cover it up and pretend it was reasonable.
Re:Repost (Score:5, Insightful)
Previously the "blanket" license applied in Russia. They're adding it to more countries.
That's not deceptive. That's you calling it deceptive.
Re:This is pretty straightforward (Score:4, Insightful)
The Russian government treats copyright law as a criminal, as opposed to civil matter. The Russians would ask Microsoft if they were all licensed up, and Microsoft's people in the area were saying "no", probably because they didn't have enough pull to say "yes" within Microsoft.
It's typical bureaucracy. When the negative PR reached Redmond, they were like, "Whaaaaaa?" and responded by saying all NGOs in Russia are licensed, period.
Microsoft is now expanding the program in other countries where they suspect similar tactics may be used. How shameful.
Geezus guys, who gives a frak if it benefits M$?!! (Score:2, Insightful)
What the Russian gov't is doing to the political opposition is criminal. Odds are that M$'s motives aren't pure as I'm sure someone, if not the originator of the idea, knew M$ would get good PR in the West for their actions. If one grants that their ulterior motives are impure it only underscores the beauty of what M$ is doing: Giving the Russian gov't a dose of their own medicine. What M$ is doing is along the same lines as Russia in that they are both doing something that they know will get good PR in the West but with 'hidden' self-serving ulterior motives. Russia deserves a dose of its own medicine. Kudos to M$ for poking the Russian gov't in the eye, even if M$ gets some benefit from it!
To those who point out the possibility/fact that Russia will just find some other pretext to appear to be legally cracking down on the Oligarchy's enemies, this doesn't mean that simply rolling over and giving up because that could/will happen is the correct course of action. If the opposition does that, then Russia will just continue to be the frakked up entity it has been since at least the time of Kievan Rus'.
What the hell (Score:1, Insightful)
This is ridiculous. I thought Slashdot was finally over this kind of thing?
I'm sorry man, I lost you after the third dollar sign. No one will take your arguments seriously like this, anymore than anyone would take someone obviously biased against FOSS repeatedly using terms like "linsux" or "open sores".
Re:Repost (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Anything... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Repost (Score:4, Insightful)
Please don't use URL shortners. Im not gonna click that link, and a good portion of other people are not going to click that link. The information you were trying to spread is not being spread.
You take what very well may be an informative post, and relegated it to possibly being a trollish goatse post. It would be like taking a samsung dvd player and rebranding it as a $generic_brand. No one is gonna buy it, we all think its no good. No one is gonna click your link because it looks like $generic_goatse
Re:Repost (Score:2, Insightful)
What should they do exactly?