Boing Boing: MSFT won't Sasser-patch bootleg Windows

Boing Boing: MSFT won't Sasser-patch bootleg Windows

This is sort of an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, i'm kind of amused that Microsoft is asserting its (perfectly legitimate) right not to support users of pirated software. On the other, there is a valid analogy to be made here with the vaccine/outbreak scenario.

I'm glad that my Mac's tiny marketshare by and large protects me from these kinds of outbreaks.

I'm confident, in this case, as with some finite number of future cases, that the open source/hacker community will come to the rescue and distribute patches to prevent the spread of this particular worm. But how enduring and how generous is the goodwill of the amateur hacker community? Nobody's getting paid for this, and nobody probably ever will, and it's a fair sight more difficult to patch and fix Windows than it is an open-source product like Linux... to say nothing of the trust/signature/liability issues associated with distributing OS-level patches.

Oh well, i couldn't blog about winning meaningless contests forever.