Australian Linux community applauds Warez raids
"This is great for Linux," Con Zymaris, CEO of specialist IT services company Cybersource, told ZDNet Australia. "The more pressure that is applied to everyone to be legal with their software, the more acutely attractive Linux and open source software look."
According to Cybersource, which carried out analysis of the licensing requirements of organisations that employ 50, 100 and 250 staff who use computers, companies can save from AU$160,000 to AU$550,000 on licence fees alone if they use Linux & OSS rather than Windows & Microsoft technologies.
From Microsoft's point of view it's been a case of "don't spook the horses before you've got them corralled off," Zymaris said. However, now that the software giant has reached market saturation point and is struggling to get new customers it is cranking up the heat in making everything legal and more expensive as well as putting licensing restrictions on users resulting in more businesses considering the open source, he added.
"In order to get out of a Windows world they need a damn good reason," he said.
"The more people are forced to look at the licensing costs of Windows...the more seriously I think they'll start looking at free cost software," he added. "More and more are saying to us 'give us a cost reason to take it to our financial people to convince them to move to Linux'."
Other Linux enthusiasts have also applauded the dawn raids on premises countrywide as part of an international crackdown on pirated software.
"Windows XP and the Business Software Association of Australia (BSAA) do a great job in promoting open source software un-intentionally," another ZDNet reader said. "That's great. Monopolies need competition."
Another ZDNet reader, calling himself Little John of Sherwood Forest, said: "I buy shareware all the time. I am happy to pay $30, $40 or $50 for product... but $400, 500 or $1000? I think not." However, "the only thing that these types of 'crackdowns' do is to make sure that some monopolistic crusher of free enterprise makes an addition billion dollars this year to intimidate governments with, whilst destroying any hope of you and me getting a real choice in computing platforms. I am against theft just as much as the next guy, but in the real world I will give a lot more support to the Robin Hoods of the world than to the Adolf Hitlers. Are you a merry man or a brownshirt?"
Microsoft has been contacted for comment. --Rachel Lebihan, ZDNet Australia