A Gartner Group report on PC Latest News about PC hardware sales in emerging global markets has stirred up controversy in both the open-source and proprietary software worlds. Eighty percent of personal computers sold in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe that ship with the Linux operating system eventually will be running a pirated copy of Windows, predicts Gartner.

Those are fighting words in the open-source world, and already the Open Source Industry Australia group has responded with charges that analyst Annette Jump's logic is "farcical."

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Wow. That looks almost as if Didio is (dare I say it) not entirely against the FOSS community

Just for a follow up, More from the gartner side

and i must add in. LOL

I don't see the links they make. Pirates are savvy types, surely they realise that it is cheaper and easier to sell a pc with no OS than with Linux. And many of us turn to Linux to avoid piracy - why would we bother to turn back?

Frankly, Gartner are merely shills for a well known behemoth and this just proves that point.

I would like to see the source data on which this statement is based. Due to the nature of the pirating industry, the data which is collected is inherently not representitive of the actual situation due to the fact that it is presumably only the pirates who are caught from which the statistics are taken. The pirates who are caught may not be skilled enough to escape detection and may also adopt certain practices which in evolutionary terms 'select them for capture' and also put a slant on the data. I am not saying that this is the case, only that I think that this is likely. Therefore the article may be taken with a 'grain of salt' so to speak.

Personally I have no doubt that some of the PCs with Linux installed get other software installed on them. There seems to be no mention of the percentage of PCs that come with Windows installed that people do not want and get other operating systems installed on them.
I don't think it is in this story, but one I read on the subject (perhaps the original report?) made the comment that venders were "avoiding paying Microsoft licensing fees" by installing Linux. Personally I do not believe that Microsoft is entitled to receive a fee for every PC produced as a matter of course. Microsoft may have a different opinion.
Tagging Linux with Windows piracy is at best misleading.

From my point of view there are at least 3 major problems with this report:

1. If they esitmate that 80% of Linux PC's will eventually run a pirated version of Windows, they should have also estimated what percentage of PC's running an old version of Windows will eventually run a pirated copy of a newer version of Windows (eg, what's the estimated probability that a box that's currently running Windows 98 will end up with a pirated version of XP?) My guess is that if they had, they'd end up with the same percentage -- my point being that if a person wants to install a pirated copy of Windows, they will, regardless of what OS is on the machine right now. Just because a PC happens to be running Linux now would not somehow increase the chances that it will end up running pirated software, which is what the report seems to imply.

2. A reading of the article ekagu posted also reveals that the folks doing the majority of all this pirating are unethical PC vendors, not individual Linux users. Thus, the blame for this situation should be placed on those vendors (and their customers for buying pirated systems), but not on the Linux community at large. Again, it seems that the intent of this article is to imply that 4 out of 5 times, people running Linux on their PC's are going also be running a pirated copy of Windows sooner or later. I would disagree strongly with that "prediction".

3. The report says that as of 2004 Linux is still a "niche OS" with only 1.3% of all PC's running it. Therefore, even if the previous "80% piracy rate" estimate was valid, then the total amount of Windows piracy attributable to the Linux community is all of, hmm, 1.3% times 0.8 equals all of about 1%. In other words 99% of the piracy is being done by non-Linux users. Sheesh! If you want to go after piracy, why not go after the non-Linux community, which is responsible for very nearly 100% of it?

I'd say this report should be taken with a truckload of salt, but that's just my own opinion. -- J.W.

I concur J.W. I was merely trying not to make too strong a statement against the article. You make a very valid point which demonstrates the media's control over the publics perceptions. Do you think that the average computer user come IT article reader would trust these phoney balogney stats? I do. Perhaps it is the media's perceptions of Linux which need to change with the times. Seems many of them are living in 1994.

crzyfill - I think that most people tend to believe things they read regardless of the source, but the biggest issue of all is simply that too many people aren't "active" readers, meaning that they just blindly accept whatever's on the page, without actually using their brain while they're reading. It's too bad, but a lot of people just seem to lack critical thinking skills.

Anyway, as I see it, people in the IT industry should be a bit more skeptical towards these various stats, but who really knows. Keep in mind that if you want to support a particular argument, you can use statistics to "prove" just about anything. Example: In So. California, tourism a a huge business, and promoting an image of a carefree, beach lifestyle is good for business. To this end, a survey was taken showing that "1 out of 4 Californians" owned a surfboard. There's no way that's true, but depending on how you calculated that figure, you could massage the numbers to "prove" the point. (In this case, the basis for an average of 25% of Californians owning surfboards was computed by dividing the population of the state by the total number of boards sold over the past 20 years or something like that. Does it mean that one out of every four people surfs? No, but if you ignore the fact that most surfers own multiple boards, and that the number of boards was inflated in the first place because it was for muliple years, then sure, the "average" came out to be 25%.)

This is perhaps a bit OT but two great lines that I think are useful to keep in mind anytime people start throwing around questionable statistics are:

Did you know that fully half of our schoolchildren are below average?
-and-
Did you know that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population? Amazing!

Obviously both of these are simple mathematical facts, but if you say either of these in conversation though, you're likely to get at least one person who asks "Really?" Those are the ones who would buy these phony balogney stats -- J.W.

Really,I mean I don't know where or how Gartner gathered the info,but surely they did a real lousy job.To blame Linux for someone else's mistake is beyond even Gartner's accustomed fallacy with reports.
But it certainly draws on some solid facts though.In the South American and Asian countries,esp. s.e asia(indonesia,malaysia,thailand),the market is huge for pirated software.So it may not be altogether wrong to state that 80% of pc's run pirated windoze software,but to put the blame on Linux for this situation really makes the blood boil.

There is no question that pirating can be a huge issue is countries where copyright laws are either weak or are simply not enforced, and I would agree completely that piracy does represent an ecomonic loss to those people or companies whose works are being illegally duplicated.

However, trying to link Linux to piracy is pretty ridiculous, and as I mentioned before, IMO it just doesn't make logical sense to try to imply that Linux PC's are somehow more likely to end up running pirated Windows just because they used to be running Linux, as this article seems to suggest. They might as well just say that Linux PC's are actually powerful magnets, with mysterious powers to attract pirated copies of XP. I mean come on. Not to repeat myself but the guilty parties here are the vendors who knowingly install a pirated copy of Windows on a machine and then sell it, as well as those customers who purchase a PC from one of those vendors knowing full well that the copy of XP has been ripped off. A very simple test of whether a vendor is legit or not is simply to ask "And if I buy this machine I also get the XP CD's too, right?" Legitimate vendors will either supply them automatically (or an equivalent substitute, such as the Dell Recovery CD). -- J.W.

That's correct.I mean I have seen this happening in places,especially those that sell assembled machines.Vendors just go ahead and install a pirated copy of M$ on it and it doesn't seem to bother the customer either.Why shell out a couple 'o hundred bucks for a legitimate copy,when you could get the same for next to nothing.Nobody reallly cares if their pc's are running illegal software.
I think most of the blame must be put on these vendors,who fearing low sales if they insist on installing legitimate software(coz it costs a bit),surreptitiously install pirated programs.Also,as JW pointed out,the electronic piracy and copyright laws are poorly implemented,so the vendors can get away with it.It's easy to bribe the investigating officers and get them off their case.But that's a different matter.

Gartner has been an M$ mouth piece for years. It is no real supprize to me. Fling enough FUD on the wall and some is bound to stick.

I just don't understand why anyone would install an inferior OS over the top of a superior one.

I guess it proves that the masses really are sheep.

I wonder how much every year Microsoft pays Gartner in consulting fees.

I believe you guys are missing the true underlying arguement that needs to be made agaisnt Gartner: It seems to me they are advocating not giving consumers the right to choose their operating system. It is in no way credible or logical to blame distributers for selling their computers windows free. It is merely a problem of piracy, not of the linux community, or the distributers. People in NO WAY should be forced to pay for a certian operating system, which is what Gartner seems to be advocating.

People who downoad illegal copies are simply criminals, and distributers shall not hold the blame for selling computers Microsoft-free.