From the actual reports, it looks like two directors were done for allowing counterfeit goods to be sold on their market sites and the rest were traders who rented stalls there, hardly "staff"

A home pirate is one thing, but if these people are stupid enough to load illegal copies of software onto customers PC's then they deserve everything they get. Not that I condone piracy even on a single person basis, but these people were actually making money from illegal software.

They should have also been required to change their name. Wendy UnFair Markets Ltd would obviously be much more appropriate.

When will Trading standards issue warrants and investigate the blatant theft by MS everytime we pay 300+ for Vista when it isnt' anything near that in America.

One price for them and one for us... Despite Bill and his "exchange rates."

We don't like pirates, they get in the way of converting people to the good side and using proper operating systems.

I can't (or don't want to) afford Office, so I use Open Office. It does all I need, with an interface that's familiar, license thats acceptable and a format that belongs to us all and not a megacompany.

These days there is no excuse at all for pirating M$ stuff, unless your just plain thick!

Unless u want to play games ........

The Register has got form, for pointlessly regurgitating MS press releases without actually reporting the facts - e.g. what offences were these folks done for - "distributing unauthorised software" isn't an offence any court reporter would recognise...

Microsoft have got form.. this isn't the place for me to discuss it...

Wendy Fairs Ltd have got form... in July they were convicted of "money laundering" (that's specific enough for me):

http://www.leightonbuzzardonline.co.uk/news/Call-for-action-follows-Wendy.3061892.jp

... Or use a view other then "web" or "print" (outline anybody?) whilst writing a document.

Or like a grammer checker.

"Or like a grammer checker."

Or like a spell checker...

Several years of investigation, several months in jail. Can I move to the UK?

"[snip] Open Office. It does all I need, with an interface that's familiar, license thats acceptable and a format that belongs to us all and not a megacompany.

"These days there is no excuse at all for pirating M$ stuff, unless your just plain thick!"

Yes, I see that I'm thick for using MS Office, while your [sic] plainly quite intelligent, for an OO user. Now, I'm a huge proponent of open-source software, and I use quite a lot of it myself (I'm in love with my Firefox extensions). However:

I would never consider seriously using OpenOffice. I work as a professional proofreader and editor and there are many of the features of Microsoft Office which are either unique to it or much, much better than in OO.

1) lots of Betas. I need something which is broken or inferior in the current version, and I can't be sure that it'll be fined in the next one - never mind (sometimes major) changes to the UI and core system.

2) lack of features. Sure there's a way around them, but I don't want to spend ages doing the 'way around' when I have a one- or two-click solution in MS Office.

3) lock-in/export. Exporting and format of exports is sadly not very good between OOo and, well, anything else. And a lot of my clients use MS Office; I really need to keep document layout and formatting the same; I don't want to have to worry about pointless layout problems.

4) change auditing. Due to the nature of my industry, I need these sort of collaboration tools which OOo just doesn't provide. Ahh, proofing tools.

5) lack of localisation. This is done in OOo on a voluntary and completely random development basis - unless you are happy to stick with enUS, which surprisingly, a lot of people in the world don't find to be their mother tongue.

6) yes it's open source and yes it's free, as in beer - but that just means that I'm not paying for reliable, helpful customer support. I have no assurances that my problems will be dealt with.

7) it's slow to load. I work with deadlines. 'Nuff said.

8) it's customisable. You can fix and/or report bugs yourself. But that's not really a good thing, because most people lack either a) the time, b) the inclination, or c) the knowledge:

From the Guardian:

---

"The myth of open source rests on two improbable assumptions. The first is that a significant proportion of users can fix bugs. That is true at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the concept of open source was first formalised in the 1980s by Richard Stallman and others, and it is true in some of the geekier corners of the internet. But on programs intended for use by the non-programming public, it's a very different story.

"This is important because of the second crucial false assumption: that even if not all users can fix a bug, they can help find them. They can't. Most users just think: "The computer isn't doing what I want."

---

Now, I could keep going on but I'll stop there. While OOo/the open source movement in general is a wonderful thing, please don't fall into the bad habit of Linux and Apple fanbois and do cut-and-paste rants. Try to keep an open and objective mind. I don't particularly like Microsoft (from a business and ethical point of view) but there's nothing wrong with thier post-XP products (XPSP2, Office 2003) which have worked well and consistently ever since I started using them. A lot of the bias against Microsoft actually isn't well thought-out and comes simply from ignorance, the reputation of past incarnations (I'm sure we all remember Windows ME), and jumping on the it's-cool-to-hate-Microsoft bandwagon. That sort of shallow ignorance is what will really end up destroying the open-source scene - how many of you Microsoft-haters actively work for or program open-source projects?

"Unless u want to play games ........" WTF?

No there isn't really any excuse. If you like it and it costs money, buy it, if you don't then be prepared for a letter in the post asking you to find a good solicitor. That's the facts, in black and white! Personally I couldn't give monkeys what people do, but at the end of the day you have to make your choice and live by it.

I'm sure there are many good points there, but you bury them in irrelevancies that undermine your case:

"5) lack of localisation. This is done in OOo on a voluntary and completely random development basis - unless you are happy to stick with enUS, which surprisingly, a lot of people in the world don't find to be their mother tongue."

It's trivial to install the UK dictionary and thesaurus on OO. (And now there's File->Wizards->Install new dictionaries.) How is MS' offering any better? And MS is hardly a shining example of a proponent of localisation - is there anything in Windows specific to the UK beyond the keyboard layout?

"7) it's slow to load. I work with deadlines. 'Nuff said."

No, not really. If your deadlines are so tight that you miss them because of the loading time of OpenOffice, then you really ought to re-think how you work! The loading time is a facile criticism, which is so often trotted out that it annoyed me enough to write this reply - it's obvious, but it's of very little consequence. After all, how often do you load OpenOffice each day? On my laptop, it's far less than once - I put the machine to sleep or hibernate it, and OO is still there when it wakes up. What is of consequence is the general performance, and I gather that OO works rather well with large files, where you'd notice it. Do correct me if I'm wrong - I don't have first-hand experience of this.

In addition:

"never mind (sometimes major) changes to the UI and core system."

So Office 2007, with its "ribbon" GUI and its completely new file formats, is not a major change to the UI and core system? MS would want you to think it is in order to get to to shell out on an "upgrade"!

"lack of features. Sure there's a way around them, but I don't want to spend ages doing the 'way around' when I have a one- or two-click solution in MS Office."

Now this I really am interested in. Some specifics, please. Everyone is keen to latch on to things that MS Office does that OO doesn't, but then find that these are feature bloat which they don't actually use. It just gives them a warm feeling that they are there. And one important thing that OO does that MS is (deliberately) missing is, of course, PDF creation.

"Exporting and format of exports is sadly not very good between OOo and, well, anything else."

No, OO is actually much more compatible with a lot more other things than MS Office is, because it uses ODF. There are many vendors that support ODF, and, erm, one that fully supports MS formats. (And because MS file formats are not open - no, not even the new ones - the situation is unlikely to improve.) I guess what you meant to say was that OO is not very compatible with most of the installed base of office suites, and that, of course, is MS' USP and its business model.

"change auditing. Due to the nature of my industry, I need these sort of collaboration tools which OOo just doesn't provide."

Edit->Changes. Am I misunderstanding you here?

"I'm not paying for reliable, helpful customer support. I have no assurances that my problems will be dealt with."

How much better is the situation with MS Office? Have you made bug reports and feature requests and found them solved in a timely manner?

"While OOo/the open source movement in general is a wonderful thing, please don't fall into the bad habit of Linux and Apple fanbois and do cut-and-paste rants."

In return, I'd ask you to be more specific and not to sprinkle irrelevancies about!

I believe the original poster said that "there is no excuse for pirating office" because of OO. If you are an "professional proofreader" (which is hard to beleive, considering how poorly you read the original post) then you can afford the latest copy of Office.

However your overly long (and partially incorrect) analysis of OO, followed by your clear distaste for Open Source software, points to you being a Microsoft Employee/Fellow Traveller rather than someone with a genuine point to make.

For the home user, who needs to be able to use simple documents that get set to them by people with Word, OO does a pretty good job. Some things it does (in my opinion) better than word, some things it is not so good (as you have pointed out).

As far as "cut n paste fanboi rants" go, it would appear that you have cornered the market so far on this thread.