About the Microsoft and Word
There are some alternatives like Star Office from Sun which is completely
free.

Mohamed Eldesoky
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Life is to try.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
----- Original Message -----
From: "William Chops Westfield" <billw@CISCO.COM>
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2001 9:08 PM
Subject: Re: [OT]: The value of a donation


>     I couldn't agree more with Roman's call to donate. I'm not
>     completely sure how I feel on the issue of software piracy in
>     poor countries. Certainly, they have a more legitimate excuse
>     than those who have money. And I almost buy the argument that it
>     doesn't hurt the company because they couldn't pay anyway.
>
> I think... What bothers me about using cracked software when you can't
> afford the real version is...  There ARE cheaper software alternatives,
and
> there ARE companies who have "non-comercial" and freeware versions of
their
> software, and there IS freeware from all sorts of places (of widely
varying
> quality, of course.)  By using a cracked C compiler instead of JAL
freeware
> or the free 16F84 version of ??'s C compiler , you are not only failing to
> support the vendor of the cracked software, but you are ALSO failing to
> support the authors and/or communities of the software that you CAN
afford.
>
> The Microsofts of the world can probably survive cracked versions in the
> hands of poor software geniuses, but freeware survives ONLY on the basis
> of its continued use by a community, and usually on the feedback and
> contributions from that community as well.  Cracking microsoft may be
> illegal, but failing to support the software that you CAN afford is just
> stupid...  I also find it difficult to comprehend why someone "needs" a
> cracked microsoft word when we'd probably all be better off if they were
> creating plain ascii documents in a micro-emacs clone instead...
>
> BillW
>

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