I rarely say this about something coming out of Business Week, but this piece was a real eye opener on a number of levels. Not on the “let’s gang up on Microsoft” trolley, rather to better understand where their off-shore business is headed. See, the fact is that Microsoft will, indeed, push to prevent piracy overseas and as the article dictates, open the doors for domestic alternatives.

Unlike here in the US where everything is Bill’s way or the highway, countries like China and India are still at a pivotal point in their adoption of computing and selecting a permanent OS as a whole. Worst of all for the Redmond giant, Microsoft cannot simply allow some countries to violate their IP licenses with pirated Windows and not allow us here in the West to do the same - it won’t work.

Microsoft is, on the international level, in it pretty deep with at least two of its emerging markets. While today it remains dominant over Linux in usage for India and China, try asking how many of those Windows users paid for the OS. The percentages might surprise you.

Tags: microsoft, linux, operating system, ip rights