On Monday 26 March 2007 21:23, Mrugesh Karnik wrote: > > I don't get this. Why are you guys always thinking one dimensional? > In this case, just viruses and spyware.
Not at all. It was just a response to the solution - security. Which ofcourse is completely redundant in the case of a cyber cafe. > My friend never had to pay > a single paisa for any of those problems. And no, he didn't use any > pirated versions. > And who talked about me being paid for maintaining Linux boxen? You > just conjured that up out of the thin air! And what policeman? Heck it's not u as in Mrugesh. It's u as in somebody who provides a service - including the self provider - you have to account for the resources expended on a thorughly useless activity. It's like doing pushups to improve your cybercafe business (and by god pushups is a lot less useless overall). Your friend (God bless him) is an honorable exception in using licenced software. The vast majority of cyber cafes dont care. I have visited a hughe number of them right across the country. Their cost is the cost of a cd and with the introduction of registers - where every kid worth his mouse writes a fake name and address - the bribe to the local cop who flies by for inkspection. With the cops added responsibility of discovering piracy the cost of chaipani might go up. > > And seriously, if you're going to offer a virus free system in > exchange for losing customers, you've lost already. I don't > understand why there is this almighty urge to get everyone to > switch to FOSS. There isn't. Which is my point in the case of cybercafes. Stop wasting your time trying to find justification of any kind to make the cybercafe switch. Unless you drag them all to court and fine them the cost + 150% of all software on the disk nothing's going to change. > > P.S. If you do succeed with this (and contrary to what you might > believe by now, I don't have a problem with Linux getting into > cyber cafes), since freedom matters so much to you, use one of the > absolutely free distros mentioned on the GNU site. He he. We are both shouting about the same thing. Wrong medicine for the wrong people. Cyberbhai's wanna make a living and like all other bhai's they dont care at whose expense. If anything the police should also mention a 10 yr RI for using any illegal software. Afair i had taken the responsibilty in the 2 year old thread of coming up with package that would be an order of magnitude cheaper than the combined cost of hardware / software using FOSS. Caveat the cybercafe owners assoc. which was making a big song and dance about something ( idont remember what) make all it's members use legal software They are still convincing themselves. Everytime they see the long end of the bamboo they start hollering. -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
