rxero

Saw the news article on the main page relating to MS using pirated software to make WinXP Media Player tours. Definately not BS went to the file location mentioned by the original german article fired up the hex editor and there it was. I bet the guys at sound forge are picking out which Island they are gonna be buying

John

Interesting indeed. I've read that someone at MS admitted to using a pirated version of Sound Forge for trial purposes and they later purchased the needed licenses.

Looks like slashdot picked it up too:
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/11/1...&tid=109&tid=1

I'm still not sure I buy it though

Rockoon

It is generally not illegal to use a "pirated" copy of a program if you have a license to use the original/official copy. For example if your legit MSDOS 3.1 Disk gets damaged you are perfectly within your rights to obtain a working copy.

You generally still have a license to use the software, regardless of the state of the media you originally got it on.

Like everything tho, make sure you read and understand the License Agreement as it may preclude such activity.

Several times I have had to obtain a cracked version of a game I purchased because the copy protection scheme they use is incompatible with my DVD/CD drive. I've always contacted the game makers to try to resolve the issue first. The folks at Blizzard Entertainment tech support *suggested* that I get a NOCD crack after I refused to get a new drive when their 1.10 patch for DiabloII: LOD came out, as they greatly increased the terseness of the copy protection with that patch.

As for this microsoft thing.. it is sounding to me like developer broke the law by using a program he did not have a license to use, and then later purchased a copy of the program before he released what he developed.

noi_max

What, Microsoft steal? Never!

AtmaWeapon

Depending on how Microsoft's employee contracts are worded, it's most likely that Microsoft is not responsible for the employee's actions. Sure, they distributed the files the employee made, but if the contract holds employees liable for such actions then MS would be perfectly innocent in trusting the files without double-checking the validity of the program used. I would imagine they have some kind of indemnification clause that holds the individual responsible for random acts of stupidity. Whether or not MS intentionally did it, some poor sap is going to get the sack.

rxero

Righto we have a legal person on the forum it seems BTW For those who haven't seen pirates of silicon valley it deals w/ MS and apple "piracy" back in the day. I mentioned it in another thread.

tomc2506

rxero, an OS is eventually going to use a GUI, whether other companies have or haven't. Can you imagine a platform without a GUI being used anywhere near as widely as any OS's today?

AtmaWeapon

Actually, Unix is doing quite well these days, and depending on how literal you are with the definition of GUI, the IBM AS/400 is doing well without a GUI too.

tomc2506

I figured someone would mention Unix, although I don't really see it affecting Windows market share at present..