Who said a public outcry – even if it’s just on the internet – never helped anyone? Yesterday, we reported on The New York Times’ findings that Microsoft lawyers were taking part in raids on opposition groups in Russia. Today, Microsoft has announced a number of steps to fix the situation – the most significant of which is a unilateral software license extended to all NGOs in Russia and several other countries.
Microsoft already has several programs in place that provide NGOs with free software licenses. Over 2009, the company donated over $390 million in software to over 42000 NGOs around the world. The problem in Russia, however, is that many NGOs are not ware of this program. Microsoft will now fix this issue by creating a unilateral license for NGOs in Russia.
“To prevent non-government organizations from falling victim to nefarious actions taken in the guise of anti-piracy enforcement, Microsoft will create a new unilateral software license for NGOs that will ensure they have free, legal copies of our products,” announced Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel.
The license will be applicable in Russia and several other countries, and will cover newspapers and smaller independent media as well. The license is automatic; i.e., it will apply to these organisations without them having to undertake any action. In other words, the authorities in Russia and some other countries can no longer use piracy as a cover for exerting political pressure.
Since Microsoft still wants to move organisations into the existing donation program over time, the license is set to expire after 2012. However, if more time is needed, the license duration will be extended.
In addition, Microsoft will ensure the proper authorities know about this new license. “Of course, to be effective this information needs to make its way through the legal process and into the courtroom,” Smith details, “For this reason, we’re creating in Russia a new NGO Legal Assistance Program focused specifically on helping NGOs document to the authorities that this new software license proves that they have legal software.”
While Microsoft believes in its fight against software piracy, “none of this should create a pretext for the inappropriate pursuit of NGOs, newspapers, or other participants in civil society. And we certainly don’t want to contribute to any such effort, even inadvertently.”
Kudos to Microsoft for this swift course of action, and while this surely will not prevent the Russian authorities from harassing political opponents, it at least makes it a tiny little bit harder.
Very nice to see this timely and helpful action by Microsoft. Kudos.
I could bitch about anyhing, so I will. While it’s awfully nice of Microsoft to offer this “unilateral license”, there are two real reasons they’ve done it. Firstly, there’s their usual vendor-lock-in practise. Members of NGOs will use Windows at home because they use it at work. Second should be obvious, giving them all free copies of Windows with no legal ambiguity means they won’t all run off to the penguin flock to avoid suspicion of piracy. Microsoft could have sat bakc and done nothing, but I’m sure it woould have cost them a fair portion of the Russian private sector.
I’m a little shocked the whiny “What about Linux” (like a second rate Raven from ECW) took until the second post.
I think it says a lot about the ‘alternatives’ when people would en-masse rather pirate the pay version than even CONSIDER running the alleged ‘free ones’. Of course I find it more telling many of the people I know who were pirating XP tried 7, shrugged their shoulders and said “You know, I’d be willing to pay money for this” *** SHOCK, WHAT A IDEA ***
But of course the fault HAS to rely on Microsoft’s alleged strong-arm tactics and couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that so far as using it as a deskop OS is concerned Linux (or if we let the free*** interject, the GNU toolchain running atop linux) lags a decade or more behind the major pay alternatives. Between pain in the ass compatibility shortcomings even on allegedly supported hardware and the dearth of quality applications is it any wonder low-income users resort to piracy to even approach a useful solution?
…and even when running the better apps via crossover/Wine it’s like driving with the parking brake on
… and this is from someone who at this point won’t even LOOK at anything other than Linux for servers at this point – But you tack that bloated slow buggy pile of garbage X11 implementation atop it, piss-poor font rendering even with the ‘illegal’ bits of freetype enabled, stack two or three different window libraries since nobody can agree on which ones to build their apps on, mix in the piss-poor interaction between running applications or even between the user and applications — and the mere notion of ‘Linux as ready for the desktop’ is a total JOKE for anyone who actually uses their computer for ‘normal desktop’ WORK!
Not exactly surprising Apple didn’t use X11 under their system and instead have a optional X11 system you can run atop their own graphical stack, or that Google pitched X11 in the trash for Android…
But of course, the problem with Linux adoption in the business space is Microsoft. Only partly true, in that they continue to make a better more versatile and less confusing product.
I think it says a lot about the ‘alternatives’ when people would en-masse rather pirate the pay version than even CONSIDER running the alleged ‘free ones’.
While I very, very rarely agree with our very own troll deathshadow this I do kinda agree with. With Linux every time I use it there is either this or that wrong and needs workarounds, and it’s getting annoying.
I just installed Linux on my new desktop yesterday and instantly ran to a problem: I couldn’t set my resolution to the native one used by my display. I had to go tussle around in xorg.conf and add a ‘Virtual’ line in there for it to start working. Such a really god damn stupid issue that I don’t understand why is there even need for such.
I know who were pirating XP tried 7, shrugged their shoulders and said “You know, I’d be willing to pay money for this”
I used to use Linux daily for all kinds of things. Nowadays I find myself using 7 and rarely even booting to Linux anymore. Knowing Microsoft’s track record it kind of tickles me in the wrong way but I have to admit: 7 feels more stable than Linux :S
While your rant quite clearly indicates your literacy, perhaps your comprehension skills are what’s lacking. I didn’t ask “what about Linux”, I didn’t suggest they use Linux, I didn’t even comment on the viability of Linux as an alternative. I just snidely insinuated that Microsoft aren’t being as altogether altruistic as they would have us believe, and that their motivation was fear of a large migration away from Windows.
As an aside, I have been a Linux user for several years now, and I have had only ONE problem in that whole time: pulse audio used to make my laptop speakers make a small popping noise. So very minor and so easy to fix. None of my friends have nearly such a smooth experience with Windows, but I’m not so insecure as to go trolling about it.
RIGHT.
I’d type slower, but of course that wouldn’t help anything, so read very very carefully, and perhaps, instead of your selfrighteous presuppositions, my meaning may just penetrate the cloud of idiocy you insist on bringing to this discussion, and establish itself in that vaccuum of knowledge you call a brain.
Rightly or wrongly, validity and viability of Linux, or any other Windows alternative aside, Microsoft weren’t being altruistic. They provided the unilateral license out of fear of losing the Russian private sector – no matter how ill-founded you consider that fear to be, this appears to be the case.
…joke is on you.
This is a pretty sad state actually. It makes it seem now like MS is using their profits from other regions to subsidize others. They should have found some other way.
It’s not cost per copy, it’s the total cost and profit that matters for MS.
Say they program Windows for $1B in total (salaries, utilities, etc). They’ll aim to gather say something like $2B all around the world to make a profit. Thus if they can get $300/copy in US and $30/copy in Russia, and the total adds up, it’s OK for them.
The actual cost of plastic is of course a small $1 drop in the pond.
For “donations” like this, the marginal cost to Microsoft is not $300/copy in US or even $30/copy in Russia, it is more like the $1/copy everywhere.
Not a bad investment by Microsoft in order to buy $390 million worth of PR cred.
Edited 2010-09-14 01:37 UTC
I think you are overestimating the marginal cost at $1. If the affected parties are not aware of the license, then you have to assume they have either bought or pirated the software. So there is no additional cost to Microsoft. They are just renouncing the right the later sue the parties. Being NGOs that probably wouldn’t bring in any money to Microsoft, and would probably affect Microsoft negatively if PR-value is considered. All in all, this is a free move. Only the office to advocate the new deal has any real cost associated to it.
This is a pretty sad state actually. It makes it seem now like MS is using their profits from other regions to subsidize others. They should have found some other way.
This has been bothering me the whole last night. It just sounds so… selfish. There are actual people who are trying to make things better in Russia and they are in the risk of facing jailtime in the god damn horrible Russian prisons, and here you are complaining that they shouldn’t have gotten Windows for free even when it’s one of the major attack vectors for the government.
Besides, I don’t think there really is any other way Microsoft could have helped. Unlicensed Windows installation being the primary excuse for arresting people there really is no other way than to make those installations licensed.
…from whatever angle you look at this. In saying that, if a company can use helping someone as a marketing exercise it’s also a win-win. So I suppose we say “Congratulations Microsoft you nasty thing you”?
FTA:
Actually, since Microsoft donated it, it is in reality a case of: “Over 2009, the company donated over a million round discs of plastic”.
It is only “over $390 million in software” if anyone but Microsoft donated it.
I’ve seen you make that argument before lemur. You really don’t understand the economics of software, or at least selling software in a productized model.
The average developer in the states makes about 75k/yr. MS tends to pay above average, you are probably talking 95-100k/yr. According to this blog, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2008/08/18/windows_5f00_7_5f00_t…, there are about 23 main product teams for windows. An average software team is about 8-10 people (more then that gets fairly unwieldy). 10×23 = 230 devs at 100k is 23 000 000 big ones. MS also has a policy of hiring developers as testers, and at least tries to have 1.5 tester for each dev on a team. Testers are more like 80k, but we are still talking 345 people, which is 27 600 000. So just in developers and testers, we are talking 50.6m per year in manpower. Win7 was about 3.5 years in development, so we are talking 177.1m, as a rough estimate, in devs + testers.
Now thats a big number, but nothing compared to all the people we aren’t counting. Managers (of which MS has _many_), designers, accountants, marketing folks, marketing campaigns, sales people, HR, IT people, and everything else you would expect from a big company. We are still just talking about people,we haven’t even talked about the 8 billion per year they spend in R&D. MS has sold 160m copies of windows 7 so far, the vast majority of them being OEM home premium, which they probably get about 50-80$ for at the end of everything. That means that windows 7 could cover about 1 year of R&D for the company. And windows 7 was one of their most successful ones so far. R&D isn’t the only division that costs a lot but will never directly make money either, you have stuff like DevDiv that deliberately loses money on their software to bring in more developers, which in turn drives windows (and by extension, office) sales.
A windows release costs an absolutely stupid amount of money. I wouldn’t be surprised if it took 100m sales just to break even. Saying that a copy of windows costs as much as the distribution costs shows a profound lack of understanding about how this industry works. You put down a huge amount up front, the only reason you would ever do it is because of the massive margins you can make up in distribution. When you factor in the real costs, you start to realize why the only software retail companies still around are extraordinarily large, or very very small. You need to be an MS or an Adobe or an AutoDesk for this stuff to even make sense. They all make loads of money, but they only do it by spending loads of money on the right things in the right ways.
Well, let’s be honest, profound lack of understanding goes hand in hand with the dirty hippy feel-good free*** nonsense you’ll get out of the ‘free as in freedom’ nutjobs who yum up the commie rhetoric like a bunch of college age stoners — and don’t even recognize that they are being led down the garden path by way of assertion, bandwagon, card stacking, glittering generalities, testimonials, plain folks, and of course transfer.
It’s a bit like when they omit the 11 cents per dollar on the price of gas used for actually paying to move it to the gas station, much less the station markup and claim that along with the company ‘profit’… as if magically the trains, trucks and employees between point A and point B don’t exist.
Don’t look for the average “oh it should be free” or “it shouldn’t cost that much” free*** to understand the mere notion of wooing investors to give you money to develop a product on the promise of returning money on their investment – much less the idea of paying an employee to actually do labor.
Especially since “the man is keeping them down” with the “evil corporations”… who are the real reason we have any of this beautiful technology and why MOST of the world actually has jobs — since somebody had to pay all these innovators… Companies like Xerox, Microsoft, Borland, Apple, Lotus, Commodore, Tandy… Where the real computer revolution took place!
But what does one expect from a social movement originally founded on the sour grapes of back room *nix server geeks who basically leeched off the work of Bell Labs and heavy private investments at Colleges like Berkeley and MIT, and suddenly found their bleeding edge of 1960’s technology being outpaced by products from the above-mentioned corporations in the 80’s — where the REAL computer revolution occurred.
Erm,if you subscribe to this capitalistic view of the world, and you assert it works, why are you so unhappy?
Just a thought.
Correct. Nevertheless, the marignal cost to Microsoft of providing these license to Russian NGOs who either already have licenses, or who weren’t going to buy a license anyway, is still effectively zero.
Microsoft are not forgoing any income here. Regardless of how much Windows costs to develop (and how much of Microsoft’s labour bill is spent on people fluffing about) the point remains that the marginal cost to Microsoft of providing the licenses that are the topic of this thread is close to zero.
What they are getting, however, is a lot of free PR cred fromm poeple who are apparently too dense to work out that it IS effectively zero cost to Microsoft to provide these kinds of licenses.
Belay that last. Those people who contest this point know all about the true marginal cost of a Windows license to Microsoft, and they are not dense at all … they just don’t want it pointed out to other people. Pointing it out reduces the PR value.
Edited 2010-09-14 04:54 UTC
.. and that’s the logic disconnect a lot of people will fail to grasp as well… they’re giving it away to people who weren’t going to pay for it in the first place, and likely had no plans to ever pay for it. Net Loss ZERO, apart from the PR of “Hey look what we’re doing”
On both sides of the arguement… since if you do point it out, the question becomes “So just exactly why weren’t these NGO’s using the legitimately ‘free’ alternatives?”
Must be strong arm monopolistic tactics and the evil corporations — couldn’t possibly have anything to do with quality of the alleged “alternatives”…
Edited 2010-09-14 05:02 UTC
Some of them are. However, the majority are not, and largely this is because the vast majority of people are not IT experts, and vested interests such as yourself keep trying to loudly insist (aka as ‘the big lie’) that there is no choice but Microsoft, and that legitimately ‘free’ alternatives either aren’t free or won’t work.
If you were indeed an IT guru, and you were genuinely interested in trying to help people with their IT needs, then your position would be the opposite of what it apprently is.
Shame on you, not shame on them.
It doesn’t matter how much it cost MS, 1 buck or 300 million, the reason MS did it was because they looked like a bunch of saps, a patsy, they looked like like they were either involved with the raid, or manipulated by the Russian government. It’s bad PR.
This is MS saying “We won’t let that happen again”, it has nothing to do with money
It does indeed cost a huge amount to develop large software infrastructure.
Not millions, but rather hundreds of billions:
http://www.blackducksoftware.com/development-cost-of-open-source
$387B (387 billion dollars, or 2.1 million people-years of development) is one estimate for such an undertaking.
The thing is, the people are quite prepared to undertake that cost and effort for themselves on their own behalf, and hence enjoy for themselves the freedom and contol over their own computing that that gives them, rather than siphon all that money through Microsoft, and then still have to wear leagal threats and persecution from BSA/Microsoft for all that.
Edited 2010-09-14 05:38 UTC
Given that Starcraft II’s development cost $100m (development only, not marketing distribution etc), I’d say that the figure for windows would be much higher.
http://www.gamepron.com/news/2010/07/17/starcraft-ii-cost-100-milli…
You completely misunderstand the point everyone is making. They are referring to the cost of donation not the cost of development. No where on Microsoft balance sheet will you see a $390 million dollar expense for software donations. The cost of donating those copies has nothing to do with the cost of developing the software or the retail pricing.
Exactly.
This is the first time that I can recall where Microsoft has got PR cred from even the EFF:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/jack-booted-thugs-and-copyrigh…
Not bad for a zero-cost-to-Microsoft “donation” from Microsoft.
Hmmm, I’d wonder about that. You might see it written down as a tax loss.
Edited 2010-09-16 03:36 UTC
Well, if the NGOs are using Microsoft products it makes it easier for the Russian government to spy on the NGOs (with Microsoft’s help???).
Lord knows I have no love for Micro$oft, but I think they did the right thing here. And yes it has PR value.
MS are seen to be doing the right thing
NGO’s are protected from licensing being used to shut them down.
I believe this is called a win win situation.