Microsoft's actions speak louder than words

Spinner

Bruce Schneier of Network World has written a very interesting article looking at Microsoft's current security policies towards un-licensed versions of its software.

Initial news stories reported that Microsoft would make this upgrade available to all XP users, both licensed and unlicensed. To me, this was a smart move on Microsoft's part. Think about all the ways the company would benefit. Licensed users would be more secure and happier. Worms that attack Microsoft products would be less virulent, so Microsoft wouldn't look as bad in the press. Microsoft would win, its customers would win and the Internet would win. It's the kind of marketing move about which best-selling books are written.

Then Microsoft said the initial comments were wrong; SP2 would not run on pirated copies of XP. Only legal copies of the software could be secured. This is the wrong decision, for all the same reasons that the initial decision was the correct one.

Source: Nwfusion

tefleming

This guy is naive if he thinks Micro$oft is ever going to enable people who aren't paying for their Windows.

He's also naive if he thinks M$ will succeed. Not long after SP1 came out, there were ways to bypass their copy protection.