On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Alvin Jason Ochieng <ajochola@gmail.com>wrote:
Offenders hurt the economy of Kenya.
Recent studies by IDC/BSA estimated East & Southern Africa’s loss in revenue at over 100 Million Dollars in 2010 (Kenya’s Piracy rate is currently at 79%). A modest reduction will create more thousands of jobs, boost economic growth and generate millions of dollars in taxes for Government. Your refusal to use pirated software is your contribution to this course.
This is, for lack of better terminology, a fresh steaming pile. Preventing this capital flight will strengthen our economy more than the meagre taxes. Further from this, aren't licenses exempt from VAT? Our current USD fluctuation was caused, apparently, by the sudden transfer of 200M USD from the economy. How would allowing a further 100M USD to leave the economy create more jobs? And how exactly will using original MS software create jobs? Isn't the premise that it's more stable? Hence you won't need as many support staff to maintain a network? And support is outsourced to India anyway?
Think about the impression it gives about your business. Using unlicensed software can affect your company’s reputation negatively. Think about the impression you create when you pass along shoddy spreadsheets to your clients, customers will ultimately not repeat patronage.
How? Shoddy spreadsheets are a factor of poor training and general user carelessness, lack of attention to detail. Unless Microsoft comes with a kit to reduce user stupidity? Wouldn't a better example be the genuine activation pop up during a presentation? The risk of damage to your machine leading to loss of data and information
Counterfeit software is usually accompanied by viruses that could damage your hard drive and destroy vital data and information. These data and information are most times irrecoverable due to the effect of these malware attacks on your systems
Again, buying genuine Microsoft software will require me to have an antivirus anyway, so I'll pirate and pay for the antivirus? I'm not attacking you or Microsoft, I just think that a company like Microsoft should pass their press statements through a Turing test before sending out to the masses. They have the resources and people to do this... We should pay for the software because it's the right thing to do and because we risk jail time, the rest...