The actually used "low-tier" editions don't explicitly forbid it (I don't know about the 3rd-world editions). Even Windows 7 Home Basic allows virtualization explicitly. Of course you need one license per VM, and one for the host.

You can copy/paste between virtual machines, and VMWare at least (and I think VBox as well) let you hide the desktop, etc., of the virtualized OS, leaving only the app's window.

Good for you, I've never seen a PowerPoint file open fully correctly. I guess it depends.

It's a good helper for old MS Office files when MS Office itself chokes on it. But if your daily work involves exchanging current MS Office files with co-workers and customers, with all involved parties editing the documents, you absolutely have neither time nor will to constantly deal with even minor issues. And like it or not, that's the reality for a lot of office workers.

Nokia acquired Trolltech in 2008, and added the LGPL option in Januarly 2009. That's not so long ago. Ubuntu's first release was 2004, Canonical was founded 2005. By January 2009, they had released two LTS versions. So, the LGPL option came much too late.

Well there were 2 different license problems. The original one around the first KDE releases, with the uncertainty whether the Qt license was GPL compatible. This legal uncertainty at least contributed to KDE not becoming the undisputed leading free mainstream desktop, and would have later caused problems with commercial viability of the platform. Then when Trolltech went dual-license, the platform was legally in the clear, but had a non-ideal developer proposition. It's not an accident that no distro that targeted the commercial desktop went with KDE, despite KDE's obvious technical advantages. Depending on your POV that can be argued to be a good thing, but commercially it wasn't.

"Well, the licensing stuff is kinda annoying, but you can get around it, it's not exactly legal but nobody will stop you" is a great way to lure devs to your platform.

It made sense for Trolltech maybe, but not for small developers, and thus not for a vital ecosystem. In particular as you needed to license the commercial version from the start, you couldn't legally start development with the free version and then switch over. IMO the many little apps with a specialized purpose are what contribute immensly to why the mobile platforms are so helpful. Looking at Google Play, there's a large percentage for whom a steep entry fee would make no sense. As for the early days, you may be right about Harmony, etc., but the licensing mess at least didn't help.

$99/year is one thing, but IIRC the Trolltech license was 1300 to 2000 Euros (depending on some details) per developer, plus IIRC some annual fee on top. Apart from that, I would like to see the alternative timeline where the KDE folks didn't mess up their licensing for a promising 1.0 version.

AFAICT it was a licensing issue for the longest time. Previously, the licensing options for Qt forced developers to either use GPL for their code, or to buy a commercial license from Trolltech if they wanted their code proprietary. It wasn't a bad deal for free software, but not a good proposition for luring developers to the platform. Of course, today the available licenses from Digia also include LGPL, but that came pretty late.

Well, then we just need to produce more stuff, that will reliably increase the number of good stuff, according to Sturgeon's law. That's good enough for me :)

Yeah, I don't disagree with this either. However, I want to remind you that freedom from unwanted tasks, and more time for family, the arts, and all beautiful things, has little to do with socialism, but was the promise of technology in the west as well, just like the hope of improvement for all humanity was the driving force behind the whole Enlightenment (of which industrial technology is a result).

Ooops, typo: the album peaked in Austrian charts on 17, not 87.

The situation with health care is not *that* rosy here, either, but certainly better than the US, yes.

Good point, and a depressing one. Because really, the fact that efficiency continues to grow should make us richer, not poorer (that was the promise of technology, anyway). And if the well-off want to enjoy their life, we better find something to do for the "useless" masses in their "spare" time.