Comment Re:An Open Letter to CHINA (Score 1) 313
In fact, the biggest losers of rampant software piracy are FOSS and indigenous Chinese software industry. I remember back in the 90's the most popular Word processing/Office product in China was not made by Microsoft, but an indigenous company called KingSoft (). It had a higher market share because a) it had better Chinese publishing support; b) it costed only 1/10 the price of a M$ Office. By the way, the founder of KingSoft, Bojun Qiu is one of a few genuine early Chinese hackers.
Eager to take over the Chinese market, Microsoft tricked KingSoft to use
I every seriously think M$ should thank the myopic communist comrades who allowed M$ to sell pirated Win/Office opium to China in the very early days. Had it not been the software piracy, most Chinese users (1300 millions of them) will likely pay $29 for a local made Office instead of that $599 M$ Office, even if the latter is technically superior in some ways. Over the years, indigenous Chinese software companies might have become much stronger and start to sell that $29 Chinese Office in Walmart, and it will be a disaster for Redmond, just like cheap Chinese toys/T-shirts conquered the American market. If you aren't that picky, a $5 T-shirt is just good enuf. That $500 Marc Jacob looks fancier and is made with better craftsmanship --- so what, 90% American consumers will just buy Walmart and be satisfied. In software market it is even worse, who every "owns" the majority of the consumers will monopolize the document/API standards and better products simply can't compete. The day you see all software boxes are made in China is the doomsday of American software industry ---- many coders should be REALLY thankful for the Chinese pirates who nipped this possibility in bud.
