I've been reading about the whole VMware's attack on Microsoft's Virtualization strategy and its follow up stories. Having very little to do with hardcore system administration I am not at all qualified to comment on the issue/issues. But since Desktop Virtualization applications by both these companies have been available for free for quite sometime now, a thought ran through my mind. After all I live in a country where piracy is at a very high level. I guess such a thought would come to my mind more naturally than a guy in say - Dallas.

Let me make one thing very clear, I believe India would have not made such a stride had there not been an "unrestricted" access to software applications. In the good 'ol days before the Express editions how could any company expect that a person they're hiring in a Windows programming profile would have legally purchased his/her version of Visual Studio 6? OK so perhaps that's a bad analogy but what about during college? Well I think the reasons are too obvious that they don't warrant any explanations. However it is this natural access to virtually any software that has led a belief into the average consumers that they expect Windows & Office to be available to them for free. A large majority of people in India buy custom built PCs and their vendors don't even mention the word "piracy" to their customers, after all if you ask for 5,000 extra Rupees you risk losing the customer, as there is a custom PC shop in the next block who they can go to, to save money.

Anyways coming back to the though that ran through my mind, virtualization gives pirate users a chance to hide their acts behind layers of legal software, thereby giving them a safety blanket from getting caught more easily than before. Take this case for an example - Say a person has a legal copy of Windows, he also has a legal and free version of Virtual PC. The thought of erasing his tracks with the deletion of just one file would then encourage him to use a pirated copy of Photoshop CS in an environment where he was not able to do so before. Wouldn't it?