One of the nice things about virtual machines is they are portable. That’s one of the reasons people virtualize – they find it easier to do HA and DR. Of course there’s a downside to portability since it’s easy to give your friend down the street a copy of your software. As we all know, that’s illegal.
While not directly the same thing there’s an interesting thing going on with Microsoft blacking out the background for pirated copies of Windows. It seems to have hit China the hardest although anyone using Windows illegally should be affected. I really love one user’s reaction to the screen being blacked out.
“If, when I’m programming, the computer screen goes black, that will probably cause some important information to be lost,” another commenter wrote. “Who will pay me for my loss then?”
Uh, let’s see. You didn’t pay Microsoft for the software and yet you want them to pay you if you lose data when a warning to buy a legal copy appears? I guess if that made it to a US court they just might side with you (yes, it’s gotten that bad here in the US).
But this begs the question, when is a user really a user? I mean do you count someone who pirates your software but is using it in your customer base? What about support for that user? Personally I’m with Microsoft 100% on this one. If you don’t like the price of the software then go find an alternative. There’s plenty of free Linux out there which is VERY usable.
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