ZDNET Censorship

Occasionally I read posts on ZDNET. There was one suggesting that open source software was a greater threat to Microsoft's income than Google. I wrote a slightly provocative post agreeing with the stated premise, only to see it removed after about ten minutes. Over the years I had read a number of posts accusing ZDNET of being biased and uncritical supporters of Microsoft.

The article to which I sent a response seemed to give the lie to this hypothesis, but the deletion of my provocative reply may turn that around. This is what I wrote, what do you think?

From my point of view, Microsoft only have not lost me as a customer because laptop computers typically have Windows installed.

My wife and I are self employed and have five computers on which it is handy to have basic office programs available. One solution would be to have just one computer with MS Office installed and do all tasks using that software on that one machine, and the high cost of MS office might force us to do that (or quit taking holidays and driving a car) if it were not for Open Office.

Equally, it seems to me unsafe to entrust your data to a program that you may need to reinstall one day, and that relies on activation servers for that version being available. With Windows 98 MS can stop supporting the system but they can't prevent me from reinstalling it on an old computer if I replace a dead disk, or the existing installation gets too badly damaged.

Removing the worst of the kill switch from Longhorn/Vista is a good start, but that is not sufficient reassurance for my peace of mind. I am actively trying to move to using only software that does not have registration servers, kill switches, digital restrictions management and all the panoply of centralised bossiness.