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"""
What bothers me is that there's lot of people out there that already know about the free alternatives and prefer to use commercial pirated software just out of lazyness or unwilling to learn (the many times) few differences between the mainstream commercial apps and the free ones.
"""

Excellent point, chocobanana. While some of them *might* buy the product if they can't get it any other way, I'm convinced that piracy hurts FOSS *more* than it hurts the products being pirated, which at least gain mind share, which has tangible value.

Meanwhile, FOSS competes at a disadvantage, because heck, the proprietary stuff is a "freebie" anyway. The pirates don't consider FOSS because, as you say, it's easier to just pirate MS Office.

GPL and other FOSS licenses, even BSD, are grounded in the right of the creator to specify how his creations, both source code and binary, are used.

If you believe in FOSS, you really have to condemn piracy. Not because it hurts FOSS (which it does) but because it undermines the very basis of our philosophy.

Edited 2007-06-20 00:27

Your points are mute in this case. There is not "Free" alternative for what these guys are offering. And yet, they get pirated to death. This CEO is 100% justfied to complain about the situation.

"""
Your points are mute in this case. There is not "Free" alternative for what these guys are offering. And yet, they get pirated to death. This CEO is 100% justfied to complain about the situation.
"""

I was addressing the general case, and not this specific one.

But one point that is very much *not* moot is that anyone who is having his software abused by people who do not adhere to the license terms is 100% justified to complain about the situation.

That's the problem. The general case has been fairly addressed in the FOSS Community, but the professional specialization industries have barely been touched.

There is not "Free" alternative for what these guys are offering. And yet, they get pirated to death.

The reason why they 'get pirated to death' is because their software is well known and it is popular, and the reason why it is well known and popular is a lot of people went out and bought it in the first place. The alternative to this is that their software is not well known and not popular, and they have far less in sales and revenue than they do now to the point where they'd border on bankruptcy.

What would you choose?

Many software companies have tried to remedy this situation by trying to put in technical restrictions to try and prevent piracy. The net effect of those measures are that it creates deployment and support issues for genuine customers, thereby putting them off, and increases support and development costs in a big way for the company involved. The cost of doing all this doesn't seem to have accomplished, or be justified by, any reduction in piracy at all.

Indeed, those who are going to pirate it still do, those who are going to buy it still do (businesses certainly will), and in a vain effort to try and stop the pirates the company will have to put in more development time and incur greater and greater support costs. The proportion of people who pay for the software who would otherwise have simply pirated it and didn't because they ran into difficult anti-piracy measures, is absolutely negligible. It's just a fool's errand looking for fool's gold, that doesn't even exist, that many software companies are on here.

The acid test of whether people want to buy the software is 'Is it good and does the company really give me something for my money?'. Anyone else will simply pirate it, and if it magically can't be pirated then those people just won't use it - eventually dragging down its profile and popularity as a result ;-).

That's the sum total of the debate.

This CEO is 100% justfied to complain about the situation.

As the CEO of a reasonably successful software company I'm sure he's able to pay off his mortgage and live reasonably comfortably compared with people in other professions. Once you have a software product off the deck (that's where the real up-front costs are), any costs in producing and distributing it are quite negligible, and it gets steadily easier thereafter.

If he now doesn't seem to like that then it's all a bit late now, and he picked the wrong business, didn't he?

Edited 2007-06-20 17:36

No disagreements here.


The beauty of F/OSS is that you don't have to make excuses to pirate since pirating F/OSS is impossible. And because you're not treated as a criminal before you did anything wrong or pushed into paying for planned obscelescence, you become more of a stickler for the license terms, sometimes help out in some way, and either avoid software that has terms you don't like or obey the reasonable terms or pay for-fee proprietary software that you really want rather than pirate it.


The irony of his position is that I'm willing to bet that if you told him to promote the idea "Don't pirate. Either use F/OSS or pay up.", he'd balk since F/OSS steals business away from him (unless he supports Linux commercially) and is often superior to shareware (compare VLC to Windows Media Player, file-roller to Winzip, OpenOffice to most non-Microsoft commercial word processors, etc).

Software piracy didn't kill the Amiga. Marketing, or lack of thereof, killed the Amiga.

yep, if pirating made microsoft great, amiga should have ruled the world today...

"Software piracy killed the amiga"

Bad management killed the Amiga.

"made microsoft great"

Maybe not great but it certainly "helped" them get some serious market share.

all of these things played a part...!!!

Software piracy - played a very small part

Bad management - so many companies are managed so poorly but survive...

Marketing, or lack of thereof - maybe
++++++++
++++++++

Technology killed Amiga.. = think how long and expensive it was to add CDROM / DVD drves, Harddrive's and Networking (Internet)... Amiga played a back seat roll in all of these as well as 3D games..
also the perception of the Mhz race... x86 was miles away from Amiga on paper..

Pricing killed Amiga - The clones got cheaper and cheaper.... with more and better hardware...

lack of RnD and progression on the OS...

Technology killed Amiga.. = think how long and expensive it was to add CDROM / DVD drves, Harddrive's and Networking (Internet)...

Which Amiga you are refering to? A500?

Software piracy was one of the main reasons for the amiga's success. I still remember the debates at school, and one of the definitive reasons for buying one was that you could copy games. Most people bought a few games themselves, though, but at least 90% of every typical user's games were copied.

I agree that horrible management killed the Amiga.

It's funny, I had a discussion with a buddy of mine when he was working at Adobe about this very topic. It started off by me asking why they don't release a cut-rate version of Adobe Acrobat for consumers without the bells and whistles so people wouldn't feel obligated to warez it, and this evolved into a discussion about Photoshop.

He mentioned it was actually discussed internally, and although Adobe recognizes that there are far more copies of stuff like Photoshop and Acrobat running out there than their license sales would justify, they don't care. The majority of home users downloading a cracked copy would not be purchasing it if given a choice, so they didn't feel it was really "lost" revenue, and it indirectly helped enforce their brand dominance. Their real concern was ensuring that professionals, companies and institutions were paying for their licenses.

Of course, that was a few years ago, maybe their attitude has changed. But I think there is a certain logic to it; companies that spend more resources on locking down their product than improving and innovating with it are fighting a losing battle. I think it's better to accept that it will happen, do just enough to make it difficult for casual sharing, but focus on providing value that encourages those customers willing to pay into continuing to pay.

Not condoning piracy or anything, but I think the impact it has is overstated. I don't question the number of unlicensed copies of software out there any more than I question to number of downloaded songs or videos, but I do question whether each one represents lost revenue as the various industry alliances like the RIAA or BSA would have everyone believe.

I think the difference here is that Photoshop is 600 dollars and this app is 10 dollars. Out of all the people that have pirated photoshop, you can definitely make the case that they never would have bought it anyway. But for 10 dollars, the majority of pirates at least could have afforded it. Not to mention it's a productivity app, not specialized art tool they they are just using for fun.

There was a comment on Slashdot a while back from a programmer of a game that recently had changed the copy protection method to eliminate cracks, and sales that month jumped 40%. Provided that's true, that's strong circumstantial evidence that some pirates would have been customers, and it's a substantial revenue loss.

Totally agree here, and that's why I think that activation style security systems are a colossal waste of time and actually hurt sales rather than protect them.

Anybody with even a casual knowledge of pirating software knows that activation is easily circumvented (unless it's the Windows call back style which is offensive for other reasons), and those that don't, know someone that does.

So what you are left with is a protection system that doesn't work, and also annoys your genuine users.

Adobe in particular shouldn't be surprised with the number of pirated copies of Photoshop/Image Ready/Flash etc. They are hideously overpriced, and greatly needed by students who can't afford them.

Adobe in particular shouldn't be surprised with the number of pirated copies of Photoshop/Image Ready/Flash etc. They are hideously overpriced, and greatly needed by students who can't afford them.

Well said. Off-topic, but I think Adobe's sales of Creative Suite products would improve if they cut the price of them by even 25%. I don't know how much it costs now, but I dished out $640 for Photoshop 6.0 + ImageReady back when that version was the latest and greatest. I still use it, and price is the only thing keeping me from upgrading--even the upgrade price is too steep for me, unless they've done some discounting since the last time I checked.

As for the $25 Pocket Informant, I don't seriously think pirating would increase the ubiquity of it, given its price and uniqueness. (I'm not aware of any similar, competitive OSS alternatives.)

Given their prices, I almost understand people pirating things like Photoshop and Windows, but I think this is ridiculous. I personally wouldn't pirate any software, particularly overpriced software, because your wallet and usage of the product is your "vote", so to speak. If enough people don't use it or buy it, the ubiquity will decline enough for the developers to do some price-cutting. In doing so, it'd be likely they'd make more money than they did beforehand.

If someone's really desperate for Pocket Informant, they could just eat frugally for a few days and buy it with that money if they're too cheap to do otherwise. If they have a PDA, I'd have a hard time believing they're too poor to afford this.

Edited 2007-06-20 16:28

How are pirates hurting the industry? They won't buy your stuff anyways.

For software costing over $500 you might have point, but not for software costing much less than $50. I don't see why you don't think that if this software wasn't available for free as warez that no one would break down and cough up $20 to be allowed to continue to use it. It's not like $20 a lot of money to most people.

Give us a break. What freedom was taken away from you? Source code? 99.9% of the people I know don't care about it. If you do, by all means, point us to an open source version that does AS MUCH as their software. So, before you call their product "such crap" just because of your personal pet peeve, I suggest you be very careful how you reply into an honest discussion about the problem. These are honest software engineers, they work day and night, and they must get paid. It's as simple as that. Nothing more, nothing less.

Edited 2007-06-19 23:52

If they don't make profit but must get paid, than what do you propose:

1. state provides support
1.a. by legalizing piracy as described above
1.b. by other unrelated means
2. criminalize the community and get cash by generating artificial scarcity
3. charity

"""
1. state provides support
1.a. by legalizing piracy as described above
1.b. by other unrelated means
2. criminalize the community and get cash by generating artificial scarcity
3. charity
"""

0. Users respect the licenses of the software they use and choose their software with that in mind.

I hate to have to point out the painfully obvious, but some people seem to want to ignore the elephant in the room.

Edited 2007-06-20 02:50

I am very sorry that you have to point out the painfully obvious, eventhough you hate it, and that I and some other guys make you do so by ignoring some kind of rhetorical elephant in the room.

The thing you're suggesting is not happening and company in the article is having a financial problem. How are you going to help? Choose 1 - 3 above or give some constructive advice. I'd say they rethink their strategy.

A pity it is, Eugenia, that I cannot mod your comment up.

Very well said Eugenia. This stallman breed has killed it for hard working software engineers.

"Very well said Eugenia. This stallman breed has killed it for hard working software engineers."

Don't complain just because you can't compete.

If you've read the article, you'll know this isn't about competition.

Well, many people do work day and night on their software. The difference is, some already know that weeping about it won't help, the others don't, yet.

When a FOSS projects tries to raise money, I'd really help them, if I know it's justified (many occasions out there). If a commercial software company starts complaining about issues in TFA, I couldn't care less, I put that on their marketing and management issues list.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely don't say that software developers don't deserve their money, I wouldn't say that. I just say, it's their company's duty to raise the money with which they can pay their developers. And complaining won't help.

"What kind of moron are you? Are you a stallman baby? Yes you are."

You, sir, are an imbecile.

"Stallman too cries like a b**** for GPL violation."

And Stallman relates to software piracy exactly how? What has GPL violations got to do with software piracy?

Edited 2007-06-20 07:30

and as i said, i would gladly buy software if it wasnt closed down shite which i can not fully utilize. Im a software developer myself, and i ofcourse wish to get paid, and when i deliver some project to my clients, its with full source code and rights. not some restrictive license.

"and as i said, i would gladly buy software if it wasnt closed down shite which i can not fully utilize. Im a software developer myself, and i ofcourse wish to get paid, and when i deliver some project to my clients, its with full source code and rights. not some restrictive license."

Sounds like you're delivering custom solutions, where it's standard practice to hand over the source code to the client. Big deal. Selling software to the masses is a different story altogether. Oh, and if you don't like the "restrictive license" that a developer uses, then you're free to simply not use that developer's software. Disagreeing with the "restrictive license" doesn't make it ok for you to simply use the software for free.

you so obviously did not read my first post, where i clearly detailed that i didnt even consider pirating it, just because i do not want to buy.

"""
i guess no sympathy vote for MS, seems they like to be pirated as this is the biggest part of their strategy;)
"""

Gates' 1998 quote, speaking to students at the University of Washington School of Busness, still hits the nail on the head better than anything I could ever say:

--
"Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours.

They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
--

Edited 2007-06-20 00:56

Who said History doesn't have a sense of irony?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

Windows Genuine Advantage? Windows Activation? Office Activation? Windows Started Edition?

Yeah, you can tell they really like being pirated.

Yeah, you can tell they really like being pirated.

They do, and I see Genuine Advantage and Product Activation as evidence of this. Now that Microsoft has allowed their products to be pirated into ubiquity, they're pulling out the big guns and forcing people to pay up. They wouldn't have nearly as many people to pay up if it wasn't for piracy in the first place, and they know it.

Edited 2007-06-20 18:46

Actually, I think managing to distribute the OS with almost all new PCs during the last 20 years probably had a lot more to do with it then piracy. The tight integration Office and Windows has also had more to do with it then piracy, at least in my opinion.

It isn't like it's food or something, it's software for a PDA. If they can't afford 10 dollars to pay for the software, how did they afford the PDA? It's hardly a necessity of life.

"Paying 10 us bucks may not be a huge deal to an north american, or someone living in London... but maybe it's huge for someone in India, Africa or South America..."

While it is indeed true that $10 is a lot of money in developing countries the people who can actually afford a PDA generally does not live as beggars in the street.

>>While it is indeed true that $10 is a lot of money in developing countries the people who can actually afford a PDA generally does not live as beggars in the street.


They probably stole the PDA. The creep saw it, and said, "I wouldn't be able to afford this PDA ever, and I'll never buy it anyway, and the current owner has tons of them", and walked off with it. The same reasoning that contributes to software piracy usually results in tangible goods theft, tax cheating, client cheating, vendor cheating, spouse cheating, and more. The fact that anyone here even bothers to post to the contrary in an attempt to justify it is proof of how low this society has sunk.

If he is so poor he cannot afford $10 then the $50-100 he could get from selling the PDA would be worth far far more than any feature the PDA could offer. Bottom line, if you own a PDA you can afford $10.

The question isn't JUST if they can or can't... it's if the software is worth what's asked for to them... I doubt you actually read all my post before firing up, so there's no point trying to explain again... but everyone has their values, everyone has their opinion of how much something is worth, and when you look at the big picture, you still have to think about how much money that means to each side of the transaction. If the price of a small software is worth the dinner to the developer, and worth the hole electrical bill of the entire month to the potential costumer, well... hardly we can solve the situation to both parties.

So if he's used pirated software sometime before in his life, he has no right to complain? In your world there is no such thing as learning from mistakes, repentance, etc? Everyone may have used pirated software at some point in time. However many repent of their practices and either pay for full versions of software, or just not use stuff they don't really need, or even go the FOSS route. Your attempt to discredit his arguments are moot.



This is a ridiculous claim if you thought about it. Fred pirates the software and thinks its great. Fred tells his office about it or being the good buddy he is, he sends them the cracks too. Software use is up, number of licenses purchased is zilch. Most of these so-called "independent" studies make nonsensical claims. However, many people are quick to trumpet their claims in an effort to justify their sociopathic tendencies.




Why should you benefit from services you didn't pay for? The majority of computer users seem to have different attitudes towards software and hardware. People like you are willing to pay for hardware but not for software. Using the argument that "I wouldn't have been able to afford that software anyway" is a piss poor argument, pardon the language. If you can't afford it, don't use it or make do with a cheaper alternative. As you yourself have said, hardware is useless without the software. You should have factored in the software costs into your hardware purchase and bought a less shiny computer and using the money you saved to buy some legit software.

"Fred pirates the software and thinks its great. Fred tells his office about it or being the good buddy he is, he sends them the cracks too. "

So, you're saying that everyone Fred knows is open to piracy? I'm sure good ol' Fred knows a few 'straight' people too...then hey presto! *income*

And rightly so!
Software and hardware are fundamentally different.
Software can be copied at almost no cost while the same cannot be said about hardware.

If someone has a shiny PC and I take it, he has lost it.
If someone has some awesome software, I can make a copy of it for less than 1$ and that does not make him any poorer.

What software pirates (silly word btw.) are doing is violating copyright.
What they are not doing is stealing.

Stealing would mean taking the software and removing it from the developer's hdd.

How you view copyright infringement depends on your view on ethics.

If you believe that there are certain rules that should be followed, no matter the consequences, you should see copyright as such a rule and not use the product without paying for it. Unless, of course, you happen to believe that there cannot be such a thing as "intellectual property".

On the other hand, if you're into utilitarianism like me, you should consider the consequences of each possibility and choose that which maximizes happiness and minimizes pain.

I always ask myself the following question:
"Would you, if it was impossible to pirate that piece of software, buy a legitimate copy or would you just stop using it?"

If I would buy the copy, I buy it even though I could keep using the pirated version.
If I would stop using that piece of software, I keep using the pirated software because that minimizes pain:
The developer would not get my money anyway, so I minimize my own unhappiness and keep using the software.

If the software costs about 10 or 20 bucks, it's safe to say that the people pirating it are just assholes without any sense of moral or decency, that goes without saying ;-)

"What software pirates (silly word btw.) are doing is violating copyright.
What they are not doing is stealing.
...
On the other hand, if you're into utilitarianism like me, you should consider the consequences of each possibility and choose that which maximizes happiness and minimizes pain.

I always ask myself the following question:
"Would you, if it was impossible to pirate that piece of software, buy a legitimate copy or would you just stop using it?"

If I would buy the copy, I buy it even though I could keep using the pirated version.
If I would stop using that piece of software, I keep using the pirated software because that minimizes pain:
The developer would not get my money anyway, so I minimize my own unhappiness and keep using the software. "

-----------

That's great. One can talk of "utilitarianism" and "software piracy is not theft" if that helps one sleep better at night. Your same argument can be used to justify sneaking into movie theaters, sneaking into ballgames, etc.

But (as I've seen argued before), there are 5 general categories of "wrong": lie, cheat, steal, harm, kill. Even if software piracy doesn't fit the "steal" category, it does fit the "cheat" category. I guess thinking of oneself as a cheater rather than a stealer helps pirates deal with their consciences.

But I think the best argument I've seen to the "piracy is not theft" proclamations is in the "Open Letter" itself:
http://www.pocketinformant.com/Forums/index.php?showtopic=11368&...
"And therein lies my plea to you. If you actually use our software please pay for it. When you don't you personally are contributing to the financial downfall of a bunch of people who are working hard to make good quality software for you. If you don't want to think of piracy as theft, think of it as stiffing us. Would you stiff the waiter of a tip? How about the guy who built your house? How about the plumber or the electrician? Or the Taxi cab driver? And yes, software does cost money to make. I pay electric bills, Microsoft dues, travel expenses to meet with MS devs, trade shows, advertising, not to mention salaries. So if you wouldn't stiff the waiter at your favorite restaurant his 15% (or 10% if you're money concious) tip, why stiff us the few bucks we ask?"

Edited 2007-06-20 17:08

Utilitarianism is a perfectly valid and in no way inferior view on ethics.


While I like analogies, I must reject yours for the following reasons:

1. In theaters and ballgames, the number of people is limited. For programs it is not.
Even if this number is not yet reached, the whole experience becomes less pleasant as more people enter the building.

2. If I'm in a theater I might cause dirt, and I wear down the carpet, chairs, etc.

One cannot compare software with material things because it's completely different.
So different that all arguments based on such analogies are completely bogus.



I have no idea, where these people get their five categories from.
They're probably either from the 10 commandments or straight from their behinds and, honestly, I don't know which is worse.

I don't think of myself as a thief or cheater and my sleep has never been more refreshing, thanks for asking.
I wish you would get off your high horse and stop seeing the world all black and white.
Oh, and you might want to read a book or two about utilitarianism or philosophy in general, but that's just a suggestion.

Anyway, please stop thinking of people with different views on ethics as thieves or cheaters.

Edited 2007-06-20 21:38 UTC