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It's piracy as how the company defines it. They set the limits of acceptable use, within the accepted practices/rights of consumers of course. What we may consider acceptable may conflict with what the company defines in their EULA.

"What we may consider acceptable may conflict with what the company defines in their EULA."

EULA's arent legal documents and consequently cant be legally enforced, at least not in sane countries.

When a pirated copy of Autocad or a pirated copy on Visual Studio 2005 runs natively in Linux maybe.

Mitarai,

Re: When a pirated copy of Autocad or a pirated copy on Visual Studio 2005 runs natively in Linux maybe.

While I don't agree with piracy I do believe you may be in need of some help understanding what software for "Software for 3D/2D Artists, Designers, etc." is available on Linux.

http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=53452

I didn't saw Autocad nor Visual Studio 2005 in that list.

pay for them, sponger.

your pirating is costing all of us money, when we have to pay extra for your pirating

Real convincing, I see all the pirates going out and getting legal copies.

Er, no, not really, no, I don't think you've convinced them at all, and they even probably think that they aren't responsible for the price of software in the world at all, and to any extent they care about your missive, they're just annoyed at you.

If you were to switch to a free open source alternative, you wouldn't be out any money, so how is the pirating costing you money, again?

How is a pirate costing me money ? It is a thing called "perception". A software producer will think that he needs to keep the cost of the software high, so he will still be able to cover his costs if a few people legally buy his software. He knows his software will get pirated by low-life spongers, so he has to cover his own back. To do that, he keeps the cost high.

Now, his wonder piece of software might never get pirated, and he sells every copy in use, but when an update comes, the price is still so high, because the author has the idea that there are many more copies in use than he has sold, so to cover his costs, he needs to keep the price high etc..

so, there you have the answer... pirates do cost money to people who do it legally.

...When you can get many GNU/Linux distros, and many application programs, for free?

Umm, because most of the Windows apps people are pirating are much bettter than what comes for free on Linux.

Anyway, if you think pirating is a Windows-only thing, why not ask the folks who hang out at alt.binaries.warez.linux how they feel about the subject?

Which distrobution?

because they never would get it in the first place.

How do you KNOW that? I would argue that they would at least get SOME of that money, if people weren't able to pirate Windows...

This is a very good point. $14 Billion worth of illegal Windows licenses could be spun to represent users lost to Linux or Mac OSX.

If those users could not pirate Windows then they might opt for a free OS instead like Linux.

or

If those users had to PAY for Windows then they might take another look at OS X instead.

Put the stats in the machine and push "spin".

Most laptops come with restorecd's which install all the crap, if you would have downloaded a clean OEM version from The Net you could still use your legal laptop serial number.

So yes you are a thief, but to yourself and not to MS.
Now you are running an illegal copy of XP and your legal OEM version which you payed for is unused.

It's not theft according to danish law. It merely counts as patching a product, you have bought a license for.

Perfectly legal (but probably not in the US).

Yes OEM keys don't work with retail versions.

If you don't want the "crap" why not just start the install from the I386 folder?

"Is that really theft?"

No, it's not theft. It may be copyright infringement, license violation or something similar but under no circumstance is it theft.

Whilst I respect your choice not to use MS Office, I just cannot understand why people refuse to use it just because it's not "open". For my money, too many people use the Microsoft document formats for them to be ignored. MS Office wasn't shoved down my throat in any way either. This suite helped improve communication and business long before the open source community had anything near good enough.

Perhaps newer versions don't offer the great leaps and bounds folks wish for, but like it or not my view is that MS Office is such a popular product because it is far superior to anything else available.

If I were starting up a business I can assure you that MS Office would be an absolute must have. It's too indespencible to ignore merely it's not open.

We have to keep in mind, Microsoft is a business and their motivation is to make money. That's what businesses are designed to do.

MS Office is a fantastic suite of software.

I refuse to use Microsoft document formats too. I will only ever use OpenOffice to communicate with people, either in PDF, ODF, or RTF formats.

If they do not like it, stuff them.

I have sent out CVs (resumes), to a few companies, who returned them asking for them in DOC format. I know they mean Microsoft Word format, so I always reply back with the same statement.

"If you are unprepared to find a way to open my CV, I am unprepared to work for a company with blinkered outlooks"

It always works....


Now, my brother on the other hand. He applied for a job with his CV in MSWorks format, it is always returned as MS Word will not open MS Works formatted documents.... Or the people he sends it to, do not know how to import.

You'll turn down a job because they use MS Office and request your resume in .doc?

Wow, just wow. I don't get wy people make software about politics. If a company uses a certain tool, then I'll use that tool if I work for them r want to work for them.

No, I said I would not be prepared to work for a company if they would not bother to find a way to open any attachements I send them,

I will never work for a company who has trained monkeys as staff.

That's just HR you're dealing with, not the whole company. For all you know, HR is a bunch of doofs and the rest of the company is great to work for. Seems myopic to me.

if that reply was for my post about sending CVs, I suggest you read it again,,,, and pay attention this time

It was and I did pay attention. Think about it.

I don't really care if MSO is open or not.. I just care if the file formats people use are open.

MSO is a good piece of software, it's the piece of software that keeps Windows in most businesses (though that can be attributed to it's non-interop too). However, for many businesses now, the opensource software (OOo, Abiword/Gnumeric, etc.) is suitable for nearly every user's system.

I have been asked by friends and family to either show them how to get pirated software or simply to give them pirated copies of software more times than I can remember. Before many of the open source applications matured, the alternatives really weren't very good in most cases. So, I could understand the request.

I can't say that I ever really felt bad about explaining how they could get some pirated software for a few reasons. First, I would always tell them about other cheaper options. Second, they had the choice to use the information I gave them to legally obtain a less-expensive alternative, and if they chose to obtain pirated software, the instructions I gave them could be obtained pretty easily anywhere. Third, if they didn't get the software, it would most likely mean that eventually I would end up being asked to do something for them on my machine with legal software anyway, or they would go to someone else who had the necessary software (possibly pirated). So, rarely was a sale lost because one of my frieds or family knew how (and possibly chose) to pirate software.

If anything, pirated software added to the convenience of family and friends so that they had more time and resources to contribute to the economy in other ways.

I'm very grateful that it's now even easier to persuade family and friends to use legal software because there are such great, free open source alternatives. I rarely hear a request for pirated software now. I'd imagine that one of the reasons that pirated software has declined is because other alternatives are so much better.

Download OO.o and save a .doc?