Shocking news from where one would least expect it, a U.S. Army Base in Qatar is using unlicensed versions of Microsoft Windows 7.
This comes after the U.S Government paid a whopping $50 Million last month, for using pirated softwares, which led to the Vice President Joe Biden saying, “Piracy is theft, clean and simple”. Yet here we are with another blatant abuse of software copyrights by a Government Agency.
A signal soldier is quoted to have said that, at least 18 computers at the education center, located working at the base he is working on, is running on pirated versions of Windows 7.
The soldier, Mark (not the real name) said that all the computers in the lab displayed messages, which said that the Windows versions on them were either not valid, or not activated. Senior officials to whom he had reported the issue seemed to have turned a deaf ear towards it.
Mark also said he was not anti-government and has served a long time in the Army, & believes that the Army should be “kept honest and accountable for what they do”.
However there are questions about DRM issues which could have prevented the licenses from being activated as well.
Earlier this year, the U.S Department of Defense had signed a three year license deal worth $617 Million with Microsoft, to bring its products including Windows 8, to computers used by the Army, Air Force, & Defense Information Systems Agency.
via Softpedia and Torrentfreak.