But American companies still have to buy server licenses, client licenses, desktop/user cals.
Russia invaded the Ukraine, and we stoped doing business with them. They said fuck you, we will now just steal this shit and say its legal. That makes them the bad guy.
The west says, what Russia is doing is wrong and we will not do business with them anymore. Right now that still makes us the good guys. (I hope we don’t fuck it up)
Reacting to Russia making stealing software legal by breaking their stuff is morally questionable and to be honest not very efficient. At best it would make us assholes or opportunists, at worst it would make us evil too. What we can do is make sure you can’t download updates, bug fixes and drivers from Russia. They are stuck with what they have.
Sometimes doing what is right costs you. Not doing what is right when it costs you and only doing what is right when it benefits you doesn’t make you a good guy, it makes you an opportunist.
Why is the sentiment "poor russia, they are victims."
They have no supply chain integrity. Embarrassing logistics failures. Critically corrupt government, and are actively conducting an invasion of a sovereign nation. All self inflicted losses.
Where is the demand for an equivalent proprietary OS from Russia? Why does America have to export its operating system? Why does Russia deserve to run western designed computers and western code if this is what they choose to do with it?
While it's moral on a larger perspective, this will directly cause the death of people in Russia and the West (never mind the harvest in Ukraine that probably isn't happening and will cause famine in the third world). Just because no missile is fired doesn't mean the effects of the sanctions will be without victims.
Giving the Ukraine as much military support as we can without direct involvement and continuously increasing sanctions against Russia is the best solution I can think about.
The ethics of this isn’t easy.
That why I think the solution to “smash windows in Russia” is stupid. It will effect average Russians, not businesses, the government or the military. They have IT department, staggered role outs, update cycles and so on. Software that “bricks” a PC won’t penetrate the entire nation at once or actually brick a device. We are talking about PCs not mobile phones. Besides, it is windows, those users are used to reinstalling. I would also be surprised if there is any relevant military hardware out there running windows. I get a strong vibe of “why do the Russians get to steal Windows and I still have to pay” from the original post and find his reasoning unethical and spiteful.
It's fine to refuse to function if the system detects it's pirated on the first boot. It's not fine to do the same after an auto-update. It's definitely not fine to do any substantial damage like erasing data or server configuration.
Even Linux gets pirated. It's incredibly easy to comply with GPL, and yet companies like Ubiquiti still don't do it. Should your UniFi network cease to function out of a sudden because Linux kernel devs decided to bring it all down?
If you predicate a business model on robbing Peter to pay Paul, how can you be angry when Peter cuts you off?
Even if this were so, software is not a service, despite the current trend to make it so. Nor is software scarce. Rental of scarce retail space is a service, and a totally different scenario. This analogy simply doesn't relate to the issue at all.
No, a general purpose OS should never damage itself on purpose.