I'm not sure how accurate StatCounter is, given that most Linux users use adblockers. However, according to it, Linux has almost a 14% desktop share in India.
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
789 points (98.6% liked)
Linux
48413 readers
1614 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's because even a grey market Windows key costs US$20 nowadays and that's over ₹1,600. For comparison purposes, the largest Indian banknote is ₹500.
Windows Activation Scripts are free 😉
...but not legal. Being poor doesn't necessarily mean you're inclined to break the law. Besides, Linux is useful if you perhaps want to later get a job in the tech field.
You're not breaking the law, you're breaking a software license agreement. That does not automatically make it a crime, at least, that would depend on your exact local laws, and the lawyer's interpretation of it - in many cases the actual wording around this is ambiguous and could be argued both ways. A better term for it would be a "legal grey area", which means if you're a company then don't f*** around with it, and if you're just a random user then no one gives a f***.
In any case, if those scripts were truly illegal, then the Microsoft-owned Github wouldn't host them in the first place. Clearly Microsoft themselves don't have an issue with it, so why should anyone else care about it?
Yes, you are breaking a law. Copyright infringement in this manner is an offence under the Copyright Act 1957 punishable with up to three years imprisonment and a fine.
In my country there is no copyright act of 1957.
That's not relevant. We're talking about why Indian people are using Linux in greater numbers so only Indian law really matters in the context of this discussion.
I think copyright and ownership law only broken in France tho? I never seen many country that has no that kind of law? Well if you ask implementation... It's different things. 😂
Well, your thought is wrong. Copyright infringement is an offence in India. It's also an offence in the United States, where I live. It is also an offence in Indonesia (seeing you're using an Indonesian instance), punishable by three years imprisonment and a 500 million rupiah fine. But maybe it's not enforced well there so you didn't know about it
I know there are law about it. But the implementation is different. That's why I said the implementation not the law. So the enforcement is broken.
Last time I know business software alliance taking someone to court is when Ballmer still a CEO.
I cannot comment on how vigorously the law is enforced in other countries because I am not familiar with the legal environment. In the United States, downloading pirated content will eventually get legal notices sent to your internet service provider, who will threaten to (and legally is required to) disconnect you for repeated piracy. Using copyrighted pictures off the Internet will result in legal threats sent to you as well demanding settlements of hundreds of US dollars per picture, and they will follow through with a lawsuit if you don't pay. Although I have no specific examples of what Microsoft has done, Autodesk and Adobe have sued people who used pirated copies of their software for millions of dollars. People who operate websites offering pirated content have been prosecuted and sent to prison.
Maybe you as an individual can get away with it in your country, but don't assume it is the case all over the world.
I think on my first statement made you conclude that seems I assume all country all same, and It's not what I'm intended, and sorry if it looks like that. I just want to make fun of some 3rd world country law, including my own country.
In 3rd world country, as I seen (you can say this time I made a assumption), there are law, but weak enforcement, so that's why I joke about it. (In Indonesia it has been long time, after satya nadela took office in MS, ofc in US he took leadership, not it ID, and it lead to BSA in Indonesia become inactive, and irrelevant as I seen for past 10 years. Even there are desperate Dev that made ridiculous license that include joke not to pirate their app, and if there are pirated version of their software, they hope their family got curse, have no children, or their children become permanently ill, e tc etc)
I don't encourage any piracy unless it's make customer hard to pay it or the pricing is ridiculous enough and there are no alternative, but better not to do so.
I hope this clarify that it's just for fun proposes and I don't generalize for all country, thank you
But you're not infringing on any copyright. You're downloading a copy of Windows directly from Microsoft legally, and then activating it using a free and open-source script hosted on Microsoft's own servers. You aren't breaking any copyright law in doing that.
That's how it should work, but creating a derivative of a copyrighted work, through modification, even if it is for personal use, is technically illegal in the US.
Copyright doesn’t even apply until you attempt to distribute the covered work, so no, this is false.
resold oem key is not legal as well.
only legal options are: get windows with your device or purchase retail for a hunnit $.
just accept it and pirate.
You could also just download the ISO from MS directly and use it without activation. It'll only prevent you from changing the theme and wallpaper, but you could just change the registry entries directly or use a third-party tool to change your wallpaper/theme.
And no BitLocker (without fiddling around even more)? No, thanks.
There's no way Microsoft can win this moral battle, they'll profit off you enough with all their tracking, have you seen the atrocious setup screen at installation they put you through?
Yes, please, daddy ~~Gates~~Nadella
(Sorry, can't help myself from sounding like a nutjob when Microsoft gets into the equation)
Not sure what you're getting at here. I'm a Linux user FYI, I'm just disagreeing with the OP's comment that there are only two legal options.
That's fair, just disregard my comment then
Oem keys are absolutely legal in the EU
It's of questionable legality. It's not illegal as in "piracy", but the seller, or whoever obtained that key from Microsoft, is violating their agreement with Microsoft by reselling the keys.
I absolutely agree that Linux is great and I genuinely hate Windows for number of reasons. The problem is that some people just have to use Windows. This might include me in a few days, because I'm in high school and we have to install Solidworks. I think that for these people, Windows Activation Scripts are a good option that is safe (like it's not a virus), is free (because I don't want to pay for OS that I'm forced to use for some reason) and is safe in the meaning that there is no way of legal consequences if you are an individual, AFAIK. Also the licenses from 3rd party websites are often stolen licenses and buying them is IMO worse than activating Windows using the scripts, since you are supporting scammers.
Who makes the laws?
Do the people making the laws respect the laws they create?
They create the laws for whom?
Really? Piracy should not be very popular there then. oh wait…
https://www.revenera.com/blog/software-monetization/software-piracy-stat-watch/
https://dataprot.net/statistics/piracy-statistics/
You really need to learn to read properly. What I'm saying is that being poor on its own does not incline people to commit crime. You read it as "People commit piracy if and only if they are poor", which is the only statement under which your reply and its implications would be logically sound.
Is being poor correlated with piracy? Yes. But I argue the much bigger factors are the lack of availability of legitimate methods of acquiring software in India as well as the difficulty of acquiring such legitimate copies, even when they are available. There are also cultural differences that make piracy more acceptable in India than in other places, such as Europe or North America.
Think of it like this: a hypothetical 13-year-old child in the United States who wants a video game and sees it on Steam for 60 USD may consider piracy, but is much more likely to save up for it and buy it legitimately when they get a Steam gift card for their birthday or ask their parents for it for Christmas. Their parents can easily go to Walmart or Amazon and buy a copy. Meanwhile, a child in India who sees the same game for sale for the equivalent of 5,000 INR will know that is firstly a ludicrous amount to save for, and secondly, may not be available in their region, and thirdly, lacks the ability to simply ask for it for their birthday or something. Gift cards don't seem to be too common in India. A person living in India is also less likely to have access to banking infrastructure that allows for easy electronic payment. Even things bought on Amazon have "cash upon delivery" available as a payment method. That is how undeveloped India's payment infrastructure is. Meanwhile in the USA, every teenager has their own bank account and debit card. As a result, the Indian teenager is more likely to pirate. But it is not solely because they are poorer.
It's not that deep.
Kid wants a video game thats paid
Kid searches the game piracy website and finds it.
Kid downloads and plays the pirated game
Every kid does this and you know it. People don't consider downloading things off of internet as some sort of a moral test or a criminal action. And software piracy is just in paper in some countries.
It's not that shallow. You are trying to use an anecdote, and not even a concrete anecdote, to argue a matter of statistics. The anecdote isn't even illustrative of any point. It is utterly disconnected from any statistical argument. It is not logically sound and you should know that. We're talking about how many people pirate things, not whether any given person pirates something. What you have argued in your comment is, "there exists a set of circumstances where a person could reasonably be driven to commit piracy". That is neither persuasive to your thesis nor particularly enlightening.
I really wish rhetoric was taught as a standard subject in grade school. It must not be where you're from.
why go through the trouble when linux is free?
Sadly, some people have to use Windows.
Is this real and safe? Why is Microsoft letting it be hosted on their own platform?
I looked at the code but the "single file version" is 10377 lines of Batch. They want me to do the power shell equivalent of
curl abc.com | bash. The official website looks legit but I have no idea if this is safe or how they're doing it.I dunno if that particular one is safe or not, but running a webpage as a script is asking for it.
Could be swapped to something else at any moment, and what you see if you browse to it may not be what is returned if you use the command line...
Downloading the script and checking if it's the same script as the one on github is definitely better. Or running the curl but on raw.githubusercontent.com adress, because then you can be pretty sure it's not something else than you see.
These are the most well-known activation scripts that many people trust. They are well documented and often recommended, with more than one contributor. Written in powershell, I believe that if they were malicious, some of the 46k people who starred the repo or 4.8k people who forked it would notice. That being said, you can only be sure if you read the code, which is luckily not that difficult in the powershell script case. I personally trust them, definitely more than I trust Microsoft itself :D
Do you have to pay for Windows still? I thought they made it free to download
While it is free to download it, the license still costs. Though they seem to let you use it unlicensed for an unlimited amount of time with some restrictions (like not being able to change the background image and an ever present watermark). At least this was true for windows 10. No telling if/when they will drop that feature though, especially if loads of people start using it unlicensed like that (though I doubt that has any effect on people using it that way or not).
Microsoft never gave a shit about private piracy barring some noteable examples from countries with very strict anti-piracy laws like germany. The tactic has always been to get everyonem on windows and then make the big bucks seeling the OS to enterprises, because everybody wants to use windows, since they're at least halfway competent at that
Now, it's my opinion that people, en masse, can't use computers to save their fucking lives anyways and whether they're too stupid to utilize windows or too stupid to utilize Linux doesn't make much of a difference, but boy do the people get angry when anyone suggests switching off windows
Only for existing users+machines who are upgrading. New machines gotta pay up.
I mean you can use it unactivated for ever or just use a script
I haven't found a reliable system that gets around activation (had a friend ask me recently) and I personally can't live with the watermark, but I also have sensitive data on my machines and networks so I don't risk getting a sketchy iso from tpb with activation nuked.
Use MASS and you can install a legit copy of windows and have it activated
https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
Works great, is well documented and trusted. If I remember correctly it has multiple ways of activating stuff and you can select the one you want with explanation and pros/cons of each method.
EDIT: Documentation is here: https://massgrave.dev/ And it can even activate Office or change Windows edition.
Looking into that, thanks =)
No largest note was ₹2000 but just recently it got banned maybe government likely going to launch new notes?
Was, but no longer is. It is officially discontinued, making the ₹500 note the largest for now. I would expect the Government to quickly launch a new large-denomination note. India is still a largely cash society and the largest note being worth 6 USD is surely going to be inconvenient for everyday citizens.
People activate windows? Most of the pcs that i have seen using windows are not activated
The Government demonetised ₹1000 and ₹2000 banknotes a few years back as part of a campaign against "black money". The Government's thinking was that criminal organisations hoarded large amounts of cash in these large-denomination notes, and by forcing everyone to deposit the notes immediately into the bank, it would bring light to the flow of money.
It was not particularly successful and mostly all it did was lead to a week of chaos and long queues outside banks.