You know why Microshaft software is ez to get for free? Because Gates is a marketing genius. He was a leet haxor as a kid. He understood his peers and their feelings about IP. So, when he stole DOS (yeah) and later Windows GUI (from Macintosh) he made some big public noise about IP being stolen and hacked, knowing it would piss all the hackers off, and when he pissed them off they'd steal his software.

Why, you ask, did he want them to steal his software? Because then they'd use it, and whatever they used they'd recommend to their clients because that would make their work easy. Their clients were all the big companies in the world. Those big companies had to buy his software. They couldn't get away with stealing it, like leet haxors.

That's how Microshaft became the biggest software company in the world, and Gates the richest man in the world, for a while.

I watched all this happen in real time. I set up my first network in Austin TX in 1987 using CP/M, before DR DOS even had a product Gates would want to steal.

This is why you can still steal Microshaft software, because selling it to you isn't economically viable, but wherever you work, you will need companies to use software you can use, and they have to buy it. Selling licenses to big companies is highly economically viable, and that's why actually free OSS can't actually compete with Microshaft. Big companies can't use Linux because none of their employees can.

Thanks!