Microsoft's fairy-tale punishment

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, where the beer was golden and the prawns leaped gladly onto barbies from Darwin to Sydney, there was a plucky villager. Sitting on his dunny one day, thinking about the all the poor kids who'd never even seen a Windows error message, he had a bright idea. "Why not get all the old computers from companies that don't want them any more", he thought, "and give them to the schoolkids so they can acquire valuable IT skills."

He set out on his mission. From shabby office to marble foyer he went, and the people everywhere were dead keen. "Goodonya, mate!" they cried, putting PC after PC onto the back of his pickup and waving him on his way. The teachers of this distant land were also happy: "Goodonya, mate!" they shouted as he came into view.

But there was a problem. The computers were full of software from the donating companies, which wasn't what the kiddywinks needed -- and besides, nobody wanted 13 year olds looking at everyone's bank records. So the plucky villager reformatted all the hard disks. And, because the computers were old and wouldn't run the latest software, he put the operating systems of the ancient ones -- Windows 3.11 and 95 -- on them.

Everyone was happy. Until a shadow fell over the land, and an enormous roar was heard. The eucalyptus trees shook so hard that the koalas fell into the beers of those below. It was the Evil Giant! "WHO IS STEALING ALL MY MONEY?" he shouted. The people scattered, but the plucky villager stood his ground. "We're not stealing," he said. "It's old software you can't even buy any more."

With one clap of his enormous hands, the giant summoned flocks of lawyers so vast that the sky darkened. "I DON'T WANT TO SELL YOU THAT SOFTWARE," he said. "BUY NEW SOFTWARE." "But the computers are too old and feeble to run that," said the villager, noting gratefully that the people were forming a lynch mob behind him. "BUT THINK OF THE KIDS" yelled the giant. "YOU CAN'T MAKE THEM USE OLD KIT. THEY WON'T GET THE MOST FULFILLING EXPERIENCE."

This was too much for the people, who could barely stomach being told what to do by the giant in any case. Having it coated in marketing nonsense made them heave and chunder, to the great distress of those koalas which hadn't made it back into the trees yet. And there fell upon the land a vast bickering, which to some extent continues to this day.

Now, let's move on.

Once upon another time, in another land far, far away, where the beer was colourless and jumbo shrimp the size of small dogs waddled onto barbeques, there were many villagers. They all bought lots of software, but after a while noticed that only the Evil Giant was selling the stuff. "Where are all our other programmer friends?" they asked, and looked hard at the Giant. "You've eaten them all, haven't you?" "NO!" said the Giant. "STOP WHINGING AND ENJOY YOUR EXPERIENCE." But the judge of the villagers looked under the Giant's bed and pointed to a huge pile of gnawed bones. "You HAVE eaten them, you naughty Giant" he said. "Now, what are you going to do?"

The Giant thought for a bit. He knew that King Dubya could make life hard, but the King was feeble and spent his days making the world safe for the oil industry (or 'civilisation', as he called it). So, the Giant pulled himself up to his full height and in a shower of press releases said: "I WILL GIVE A BILLION DOLLARS OF MY SOFTWARE TO POOR SCHOOLS." said the Giant. He knew that he could make software as easily as breathe, and a billion dollars of software given to people who wouldn't have bought it anyway costs virtually nothing. And the thought of millions of schoolkids growing up using Microsoft software didn't displease him at all, strange to say.

"What good is that?" asked the villagers. "I'LL MAKE SURE THEY HAVE REFURBISHED PCS TO RUN IT ON." "But those PCs are old and frail and..." said the villagers. "THEY'RE GOOD ENOUGH FOR KIDS," said the Giant. "NOW, LEAVE ME ALONE."

The real world isn't a fairy tale. The evil giant isn't always evil, and the plucky villager isn't always saintly. In this case, the founder of the PCs for Kids charity in Australia is now on the lam after $60,000 went missing from the accounts, while Bill Gates is trying to inoculate half the world: clearly, there are better ways to help the poor than to give them software.

Yet I can't be alone in thinking that punishing a company by giving it a huge competitive advantage in a brand new market, at minimum expense to itself, is one of the queerest examples of justice outside of the Grimm Brothers. Forget Harry Potter, this is the real fantasy for our times.