The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
The dilemma facing Microsoft is that it cannot afford to crack down too
heavily on piracy in countries like Romania and China for fear of
driving developers into the arms of Linux. Yet if Microsoft doesn't
show some resistance to piracy in emerging economies it doesn't play
well to customers in the developed world who pay for their Microsoft
software.
Like many other Eastern European nations like
Poland and Russia, Romania is becoming a popular destination for
offshore development because of the comparatively cheap labour costs.
The ability of developers in such countries to use pirated software
with relative impunity must further rankle developers in high cost
locations who are forced to pay for their software.
It must also annoy corporations in the West who have previously
suffered the indignity of raids, subsequent audits and fines because a
relatively small percentage of their software was found to be non
compliant. One such highly publicised case in 2000 involved guitar
string maker Ernie Ball, which was raided by the BSA and found to have
a relatively small proportion of unlicensed programs on its premises.
While the BSA made a big noise about its collar in the media, the
result was that Ernie Ball, miffed by its treatment, ditched Microsoft
and has been a 100% Linux site ever since.
Meanwhile, Linux and other open source advocates, who believe that the
cost component of software should be based on services and support, may
be sitting back and having a good laugh at Microsoft's latest
embarrassing episode in Romania.
However, secretly Microsoft could just as easily be having a rib
tickling laugh at the expense of Linux. There is not a single nation
that matters in the developing IT world where Microsoft has not managed
to gain a significant market share and it's largely due to the rampant
software piracy that Microsoft purports to loath.
David Bass
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