Comment by zamadatix
7 years ago
As another hypothetical... if it were impossible to pirate Windows, would it be nearly as popular around the world? If even one person/business would have used something else that was free as a result of having never used Windows before then there is a definite argument piracy drives sales.
Of course the world is more complicated than ideological arguments about individual sales. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2017/09/21/europ...
I'd argue it's exceptionally rare that a digital good be so unique as to be a "buy legitimately or have nothing" item and any DRM designed to treat software like that does more harm to sales through difficulty to purchase or use than it saves.
Gates has said as much: no.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060411095315/https://www.latim...
>As another hypothetical... if it were impossible to pirate Windows, would it be nearly as popular around the world?
Why Windows became popular will never have a single unarguable objective answer. It was probably a combination of factors, like anything else. The only fact we know is that Microsoft became one the most successful and richest companies, and it was because hundreds of millions of people paid Microsoft for their software, when credible alternatives existed and continue to exist.
>If even one person/business would have used something else that was free as a result of having never used Windows before then there is a definite argument piracy drives sales.
I'm not sure I follow your line of thought here. Piracy made windows popular, and so people bought Windows because... they didn't want to pirate it? That is a pretty convoluted argument.. ! :)
Microsoft did not grow big, because millions of home users decided to buy DOS/Windows as they considered the best choice. Microsoft purchased DOS, which was bundled for every single IBM PC. This gave the foundation for the company to be able to improve their software family giving them a stable income even if every single DOS alternative was superior to their system. IBM was not able to prevent the creation of the PC compatibles which was a really strong advantage for MS as DOS became their default go to OS. Cheap computers created a really big market for the platform so developing to MS products became a good idea. However the businesses were the ones who choose to buy Microsoft products, and not because of the OS, but their office software products, which worked, of course, primarily in their OS. Most of the home users just get it bundled with their hardware purchase, others for home use just pirated it (especially out of US). Their focus were the software they use, did not really care about the OS. And that's how piracy helped MS, children playing with computer games arrived in the work market with familiarity with MS products, which kept the companies using and buying those products.
>Microsoft did not grow big, because millions of home users decided to buy DOS/Windows as they considered the best choice.
Yes, things don't get popular primarily because they're the best in class. They get popular because of a variety of factors. That applies to all tech products that are popular - Photoshop, oracle, mysql, windows, macOS, Linux, iphones, android phones, etc, etc, etc. MS, like every other company started at 0% market share. People chose to use their products because they provided some value to them. If you don't think people bought MS products because they were good, thats OK, you can have that opinion. Whether or not MS software is shitty has no real bearing on my point here.
>And that's how piracy helped MS, children playing with computer games arrived in the work market with familiarity with MS products, which kept the companies using and buying those products.
Without any numbers or data, I will just have to accept your argument at face value. I'd love to see verified stats of sales versus users/installations. Will be easy to confirm exactly how much of an effect it had...
> Piracy made windows popular, and so people bought Windows because... they didn't want to pirate it?
Many pirates are not bad people: they want to pay for your content, but for a variety of reasons they can’t (DRM prevents them from using it they way they want, they can’t afford it right now, etc.) As circumstances change they will purchase your stuff.