Someone at Microsoft just had a moment of clarity:

A senior Microsoft exec has admitted that some software piracy actually ends up benefiting the technology giant because it leads to purchases of other software packages.

In this way, some software pirates who might otherwise never try Microsoft products become paying customers, according to Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes.

“If they’re going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else,” Raikes told delegates at last week’s Morgan Stanley Technology conference in San Francisco, Information Week reports. […]

Rather than saying that piracy isn’t a problem per-se, Raikes reckons that between 20 and 25 per cent of US software is pirated, he argues pragmatically that it can have benefits over the long-run. “We understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people who are using our products,” Raikes said. “What you hope to do over time is convert them to licensing the software,” he said. […]

“You want to push towards getting legal licensing, but you don’t want to push so hard that you lose the asset that’s most fundamental in the business,” Raikes said, adding that Microsoft is developing “pay-as-you-go” software pricing models in a bid to encourage low-income people in emerging countries to use its technology. (emphasis mine)

How else do you think they ended up dominating the market globally? There’s a LOT of people in the world for whom the price of a copy of Windows is simply out of the question, and within that group are people who could actually get better jobs and improve their lives w/ access to it in other ways. In the long run it benefits Microsoft because you end up with even more people fluent in their software, and since they’re used to it, that’s what they get when they have the chance.

Of course, if it didn’t cost so freakin’ much — even better, if it were open source — this wouldn’t be an issue at all, so…

Props to Afterdawn.com for spotting this. They have comments on the issue as well.