Why I Use Linux: Lofton�s Story

[ Thanks to Jeremy LaCroix for this link. ]

"Asia is like this: totally Windows, totally pirated. Every Chinese university uses a pirated, ghosted copy of Windows and MS Office. The original CDs came from Russian crackers, or so I was told at one point. Imagine the difficulty of a foreign English teacher trying to explain why attribution and citation is necessary for my students. Imagine the giggles (not really, the Chinese students don't giggle in class) when you explain copyright and trademarks and patents in this environment.

"Two years later I went to Thailand. It was, if anything, worse. Every computer in Thailand ran a pirated copy of everything. Every computer plaza had a number of software stores that sold anything you wanted for $2.50 a CD. Some CDs had thousands of dollars of software. Adobe CS 3 I remember was available within hours of its release for $6.00 for the DVD. How can you teach honesty, IP, copyright and all the rest of the framework of intellectual honesty in an environment like this?"

Complete Story

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