Many MS Office users faced with few options, get legal or get OpenOffice.
Recently Microsoft has given reason you many users to ponder whether or not their office software legal? allegedly according to figures published by Microsoft, 35% of the software in the world is thought to be counterfeit or otherwise illegal. Now after years of unofficially tolerating piracy as a means of securing market share, Microsoft has begun going on the offensive to make sure copies of it’s software are legitimate and remove or severely limit the means by which their software can obtain necessary updates.
What can you do you may ask? According to a website promoting OpenOffice you can get legal simply by installing OpenOffice. [ An advertising link is available at the bottom of this blog. ] Obviously there is the Microsoft alternative. Microsoft believes it will be able to convince pirate Office users to pay to upgrade to legitimate versions through its proposed Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program. OGA, modeled on the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, which Microsoft claims has been a success over past months, identifies users of pirate copies of Microsoft software when they download the necessary critical security updates. Once identified, Microsoft sends continual alerts nagging users to chuck their illicit software and pay for the real thing. Even more disturbing are reports around the world, the Business Software Alliance is setting up schemes to prosecute offenders - for example, in the UK it is offering large cash rewards to anyone who informs against organizations. It’s not surprising that in a recent poll 86% of computer users would prefer to try OpenOffice rather than buy MS-Office 2007 slated to be released later this year.
